The Circle Must be Broken
by Todeswind
Summary: Babylon five is a haven for warriors, idealists, dreamers, and wanderers. How much damage can one more ship of fanatics do in the long run?
1. Chapter 1

Daul's perennial nightmare had not changed in decades, his terrifying fever dreams as inevitable as the act of sleep. He would close his eyes and find himself in the home of his youth, as unchanged and welcoming as it had been in childhood. It had been decades since he'd last been to Metzik, it had never been the same after the imperial purges but his childhood memories of the world would always be of a place that was green and full of life. Throne help him how he missed the smells of cooking meat from his mothers kitchen and the smell of curing wood in his father's workshop. His father... His father, it all came back to his father in the end. Daul was perhaps the only child in existence who's greatest desire was his father die and stay dead.

His father never stayed dead. His father could never stay dead.

Usually Daul would avoid the dream by self-medicating with a compound that granted dreamless sleep. It was an effective substance but not without side effects and Daul could not afford to dull his whits in the following morning. So it was that he was once again in his dream, a small and helpless boy fleeing a gore-soaked effigy of his parent. Daul knew that he was within a dream, knew that the monster was long since dead, knew that by force of will and by the strength of his own hands he had crushed stronger foes in a heartbeat but in his dreamful state the only facts that seemed to hold sway were the need for safety and the furious beating of his own heart.

Daul's childhood home was exactly as it had been in his youth, a large center hall house of the traditional Metzik fashion. A tall house made out of the dark wood of the forest that blanketed most of the planet, a warm place of the smells of spices and cured meats. It was a simple place, a place of plenty and relative calm in the grand empire of mankind. A world untouched by the wars and conflict that raged through most of the galaxy, a paradise by all accounts.

It was also the place where Daul's father would kill his entire family.

It had been an accident in the mines that killed his father, or so they said at first. Some fool hadn't properly shored up the supports and the whole tunnel collapsed. It was a tragedy for the entire community of miners. Efforts were made to dig survivors out of the cave and some were saved but Daul's father was not one of the ones unearthed by the rescue teams. In the following days Daul sat with his mother and this three sisters in the chapel the Emperor, ostensibly praying wisdom and salvation. Daul did not pray for his father's salvation, he prayed for his father's resurrection. If the great saint Daufn Por had been raised at the will of the God Emperor then why not a man as good and true as Daul's father.

It was not the emperor who heeded Daul's prayers for resurrection but his prayers were answered, after a fashion.

Daul's father came back. He emerged days later from a shaft on the southern ridge, covered in soot and looking like death warmed over but alive as any man. It had been heralded as a miracle of the God-Emperor when Daul's father had come out of the southern mineshaft unhurt some two weeks later. A curse cloaked as a blessing.

For in the days that followed his father would become more distant, laugh less, eat more, and be prone to capricious bouts of fury. Sven Hilder had never said a cross word in his life before but rapidly became the worst sort of man. Something in that shaft had changed him something that he had found in the darker pits of the earth. The colonists had no way of knowing this but man was not the first creature to colonize Metzik. There were xenos of the worst kinds imaginable in Metzik's distant past, monsters who could drive a man mad simply by gazing upon their warped visage. Beneath the surface of Metzik lay remnants of great evils long past. Creatures of spite and craft had once lived on Metzik and had left artifacts of twisted powers and false promise to tempt the unwary.

In life he had welcomed his father back with open arms but in the dream he was wiser. He would try to convince his family that the thing that visited them nightly was not his father, to warn them of the danger that this twisted mockery of a man represented, but they didn't listen.

_Please, Emperor help me... Please make them listen... I can't let it happen again!_

His mother would cry and embrace the father-thing and his sister would praise the God-Emperor for his grace. It waited for the end of her prayer to change, the blasphemy of corrupting a child's prayers too tempting to resist. No longer was it the hale and healthy image of his father but a twisted and malevolent abattoir beast wearing his father's face grinning a chelsea smile. Then it would begin, and he would do nothing.

_What could a child be expected to do? But he was not a child was he? Was he not a grown man? No.. not in the dream... never in the dream..._

Daul would watch his family being butchered by the chaos spawned xenoform father-creature. In Daul's own life the creature was slain many years ago by his mentor Inquistor Martin Gaal but there would be no power-armored rescuer in the nightmare. He was alone to fight off his father. What boy can fight his own father?

_He's not my father, not my father. My father could never be you! Please don't be my father..._

He was alone with the cruel mockery of his father's love, forced to listen to its insane cackle and listen to its fleshy chewing. For the icon bound to his father's flesh could only be paid for its boons of power and madness in flesh and blood, the universal currencies of sacrifice.

He would try to trick himself into believing that his father had not killed him out of love, that he would take all he needed out of the others and leave Daul alone but love was a boon his father could no longer grant, another sacrifice to his blasphemous icon. The room would spin as he stood, spindly young legs shaking with panic and sorrow. It made no sense for it to be happening and thus must not be true.

_Please let it not be true._

The soft and almost seductive voice of his father whispered hollow words of comfort and love to Daul, "Come now child never fear, you are safe, you're always safe around your father."

Daul would stand still, wishing to believe it but knowing it to be false. He would sit and listen to the creature's platitudes and promises till it started to scoop out the soft contents of his mothers head and start pawing chunks into a distended maw. The urge to flee overpowered all his other conflicting emotions.

Daul's child mind was frustratingly uncreative, the protection of a blanket and a stuffed bear seem as powerful as any void shield. No matter how many times he fled to his room his secret place in the hollow space in the wall between his bed and where his chest of toys sat did not protect him but he still ran there to clutch his favorite stuffed animal as though the misshapen and thread-worn bear could provide sanctuary. As though the overstuffed face held a reliquary of the Golden Throne itself.

Clutching the bear he would pray to his mother for guidance, a weak child sending impotent prayers sent to the dead. The ancestors could not save him from the predations of chaos spawned xenotech.

Ragged breath and shambling bow-legged footsteps caused by something large caused him greater and greater panic with every passing second. The softest creaks and echoes of the shifting of floorboards sounded thunderous in Daul's ears.

Daul tried to hide himself in the friendly face of the overstuffed bear, hopping to muffle the sound of his frenzied breathing and the furious tattoo of his own heart.

The creature's hands made wet noises as they slapped on the frame of his bedroom door. It grinned it's twisted skeletal grin, stretching out the skin of his father's face and cried out, "Daul... are we playing a game now Daul? Daddy likes games?"

Daul squeezed himself into a tighter ball.

"Why don't we play a game Daddy likes? Do you want to play the game Daddy and Mommy just played? I promise we'll only do it once," It cackled to itself as it tore the clothes in Daul's closet to shreds.

"Or do you want to play a game of hide and seek? Oh what a naughty child you are hiding from daddy," its voice darkened, "remember... Daddy _loves you_ doesn't he?" More laughter followed.

"Ok, new rules to the game. Daddy finds you and we play a game he likes, Daddy doesn't find you and you get to leave?" Liar... he would never escape. Daul choked back a sob, D_amn, had it heard?No... emperor almighty let it not have heard... please._

Seconds passed that felt like an eternity, the creature stood in the room ranting and raving to itself till it grew bored, there was the sound of footsteps then silence, glorious silence. It might have left after all, perhaps tonight was the night were "daddy" lost the game.

Daul dared not check, _but what other option was there?_

Daul shifted his weight and looked out the hollow. In the darkness there was nothing, a great void of emptiness. No, not nothing, throne help him not nothing, in the darkness there was a still darker shadow shuddering with silent laughter.

The last memory of his dream was a wicked taloned hand grabbing, twisting, and clawing at his flesh.

_Wake up Daul, wake up you damned fool!_

Daul shot out of bed, roughly clipping the crown of his head on the alcove above. His fears and worries about the dream were numbed by the throbbing pain in his now swollen and throbbing head. Lights blinked before his eyes as he made his way to the washbasin at the side of the room. The rooms provided for Daul by Captain Nathaniel Emanuelle Sáclair were spacious by naval standards but poorly suited for the broad form and tall stature of the Metzik native. The only larger spaces were either poorly placed in terms of security and privacy. It would not do to either leave himself wide open for an attack or to allow a member of the crew to witness a member of His Majesty's most glorious Inquisition reduced to tears over a bad dream.

_But it wasn't just a dream was it?_

It was a memory of things long past, things that might have been and ought not be allowed to pass in future. Most people feared the demons of their past, the Inquisitors simply had the luxury of being able to put names and faces on those who haunt the recesses of dreams and nightmares. Many in his profession either ended their own lives or went mad from the pressure, the sacrifices of uncensored knowledge of the universe. Daul's discomfort was well deserved but difficult to explain, better to maintain the anonymity and privacy expected of his position. Daul was not long trapped in such dark musing however, the massive form of Daul's attendant brushed through the door to his private chambers carrying a strong drink in one hand and a data slate in the other.

Daul smiled, "Cairn you're a saint."

Cairn Thross served as bodyguard, attendant, and confidant to Daul. He was a large man, larger still than Daul himself, posessed of a stoic manner and a cloaked frame bulging with augmentic implants. Cairn had once been a member of the Skitarii, the special defense forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus before his assignment to Daul in payment for services rendered in defense of the Daskal Forge. Cairn was as unwavering in his duties to Daul as he was in his devotion to the omassiah, completing all tasks in silent efficacy. He was also an alarmingly good cook and bartender who had long since given up solid food and strong drink for the intravenous nutrition drip favored by the Skitarii.

Exactly how one of the augmentic soldiers of the machine god had become so proficient in the various domestics, dalliances, and duties of an inquisitorial attendant was something of a mystery to Daul, a mystery that Cairn was unlikely to ever resolve. Though all of Daul's earthly oaths of loyalty and fealty were bound to Daul his spiritual oaths to the omassiah were unchanged. All members of Cairns legion took an oath of silent obedience, swearing only to speak in the secret binary tongue of the machine. Cairns brief bouts of speech were invariably in a garish and whirring tone of garbled screeches and clicks. Binary, the secret language of the machine worshippers was totally alien to most of the universe, some members of the Inquisition attested that it wasn't even translatable by mortal man and could only be bestowed by the curious machine sorceries of the Admech. After over two decades of listening to the garbled warbling speech and Daul was tempted to agree.

There were a number of mysteries to Skitarii Thross' name. Even if Cairn were able to speak Daul doubted that Cairn would betray the honor of his order and reveal their secrets nor would Daul be able to ask for them in good faith. Daul would have to survive on the silent service of his faithful aide without knowing every secret, a privilege rarely given by an Inquisitor.

"Thank you Cairn," Cairn made the symbol of the cog, his universal symbol of thanks, welcome, and greeting used in lieu of speech.

Daul shook his head, someday he would learn that small-talk was wasted on his impassive metallic acquaintance. He accepted the drink and the data-slate and proceeded to partake in both. The drink transpired to be less mind numbing than the data reports on the slate. There was only one conclusion to be drawn from the voluminous facts and figures, "Nathaniel Sáclair despises me."

Sáclair hated Daul for the same reason that he was honor bound to aid Daul in times of need. Daul had saved his life and his honor. Sáclair would never be able to properly repay Daul for the debt he owed, a fact that galled the notoriously willful and violently independent captain of the _Endless Bounty_. Sáclair would never be so uncouth as to leave a debt of honor unpaid but his puckish and theatrical nature demanded that he rebel as much as honor allowed. Childish pranks were how Sáclair allowed himself to maintain his own sanity and sense of control. In this instance the status report that Daul had requested was not a simple summary of the past eight hours and an estimated time of arrival but rather a complete historical log of both the travels of the _Endless Bounty_ and the Belzafest outpost. Without spending months or years sifting through the data it was useless.

Daul looked up at Cairn, "No chance this makes any sense to you does it?"

Cairn nodded.

"Yeah, that figures," it wasn't as though Cairn could exactly explain the tablets, "Goes with my luck so far."

Daul flipped the data-slate upside down and shook it, vainly hoping that it would jar some morsel of knowledge from the recesses of the data. Or at least change it into a language he could understand, the scribbles were as incomprehensible as the numbers, "What language is this written in anyway? A dialect of proto-gothic?"

Cairn nodded.

Daul looked frustratedly at Cairn, "None of this data is even remotely useful to me if I do go through the effort of having a logic engine run this through its machine spirit and collate the data?"

Cairn shook his head.

"Sáclair is going to make me walk up to the bridge and talk to him while he's sitting on that gaudy excuse for a throne isn't he?"

Cairn nodded.

"The universe hates me doesn't it."

Cairn nodded and shook his shoulders, the closest thing to laughter he was capable of. Clearly he found the situation to be as amusing as Sáclair no doubt did. Humor was not a characteristic emphasized by the adepts of the machine god but in spite of this Cairn seemed to have gained a healthy sense of irony and sarcasm that he used to the best of his ability. It was just as well that the Skitarii would never be in the service of the Admech in the future, they would probably consider a jovial Skitarii to be some grievous form of heresy.

The throne to which Dual referred sat in the middle of the command deck in a high ceilinged hall with wide banks of data-screens and vid-banks arranged around the room like the multicolored glass of a cathedral window. The room was a physical representation of the opulence and temporal powers to which Sáclair had access. The _Endless Bounty_ was a city of its own packed into four miles of starship. It was a community of thousands for whom the command deck represented the epicenter for king, country, and God-Emperor. Though none of the crew were so craven or so bold as to deny the Emperor the base of Nathaniel's command chair was probably the closest most of them would ever get to reaching the Holy Throne of High Terra. The crew of the bounty were, with few exceptions, void-born folk. Entire generations would be born, live, and die without ever having entered an atmospheric shuttle or left an airlock. Every deck and sector was a city of a greater nation flying the livery of the Lion of Sáclair.

Like any other nation the _Endless Bounty_ was steeped in tradition and governed by custom. Since the ship first left the Damascus IV shipyards and went to the stars the de-facto center of society and culture was always the grand hall of the command deck. The ship's command structure was ostensibly a meritocracy the majority of Sáclairs court of officers had gained their positions hereditarily. Like any oligarchy it suited them to structure government in such a way that they could primp and pose for the lesser members of their world, showing their superiority. One could always expect a queue of deckhands, gunners, ratings, and merchants petitioning the magistrate for marriage, divorce, or any number of other legal matters. It would be rare for either a member of the command staff to be involved in such matters but they always occurred under the watchful gaze of Sáclair.

Daul was a man of status and would not have to queue up with the crew but a meeting with Sáclair would require him to obey the protocol else risk insulting Sáclair and freeing him from his debts. It was unlikey that Sáclair expected such an obvious ploy to work but it would amuse Sáclair to no end to force Daul to operate within a social structure that he dominated. Sáclair would obey the whims of Daul but in order to get him to do so Daul would have to maintain the image of amiable servitude to a benevolent captain.

It would be a small price to pay but it was no less annoying.

Such byplay was all well and good,Daul supposed but custom dictated that he wear full inquisitorial livery bearing all the seals of his office and his signed inquisitorial mandate, which was frankly more of a hassle than he wished to deal with for a relatively simple status report. He would have to do it. He needed the information Sáclair was withholding.

"Still, if Sáclair insists upon me arriving in full livery I will do so," Daul smiled wickedly an amusing idea popping into his head, "Cairn, how quickly can you get my formal livery out of storage?"

Cairn looked at Daul confusedly, one of the tentacle like mechandrites that dangled from where his mouth used to be lazily raised and pointed in the direction of Daul's armoire.

"Not that one."

Cairn nodded to the laundry hamper.

"No Cairn my _other_ suit."

Cairns mechandrites shifted excitedly and his shoulders shook as comprehension dawned on him. Sáclair was not the only one with a sense of irony.

* * *

Daul had no issue in navigating the bustling halls of the great market that led to the transport tubes. The crew was in shock and awe of the Inquisitor at the best of times, now that he was garbed in the full robes and powered armor of his complete battle raiment they were terrified to be within arms reach. One particularly unprepared crewman actually jumped back and knocked over a table of fresh fruit, causing the vendor at the stand to fly into a fit of epileptic rage that was cut shot upon seeing the skull like face of Daul's helmet.

"Even the pious and mighty fear the wrath of His Majesty's Inquisition," his former master had once told him, "We are the things of nightmare and of greatest hope, often at the same time."

His master would probably not have approved of just how much he was enjoying the looks of shock on the faces of everyone in the marketplace. It stood to reason that people as guilty of minor heresy as those on the bounty would be gifted with a special mistrust for the inquisition. The _Endless Bounty_ had a record of trading with people and species who were off limits to the traders of the empire, a fact that Sáclair historically chose to forget in light of potential profits. They were heretics but there was more use in their lives than in their deaths, a fact that Daul had put to good use. He was lucky that the looks were only of fear and not of hatred, even the thickest of the crew seemed to realize that their survival was by Daul's will alone.

Cairn lightly tapped on Daul's sholder, augmentic fingers clinking loudly on the ornate adamantium shell. Daul looked around and smiled. A group of five armed security officers were following them at a discrete distance. Daul smiled behind his mask, "I see Sáclair still feels the need for us to have our entourage."

Cairn squinted and nodded. This was not the first time he had caught members of the crew following him at a distance. The security chief of the ship was determined to ensure that there was no incident with the local criminal element and the Inquisitor, he had a great fear of Daul that was well earned. The obviously placed guards were an olive branch to help make him feel at ease and to demonstrate the chief's willingness to comply with the any inquisitorial efforts.

They needn't have bothered, the first thing Daul had bothered to do after moving to his quarters was to track down the leader of the largest crime syndicate onboard and assert his dominance. Hess, the underboss of the largely deserted section of ship nearest to the engines plasma reclamations, had proven to be quite reasonable and compliant. Watching the best of your guards flayed alive by psychic energies before being held down by a Skitarii who injects you with a remote detonator tends to engender a more agreeable attitude. The criminal element onboard the _Endless Bounty_ was by and large unwilling to risk being within line of sight of the "psychic terror," though there were always some fools in the bunch no doubt. The submission of the ships criminals had probably been overkill but it helped enforce his own image of omnipotent control.

"If I can take out a Hive Tyrant what hope does a mugger have?"

Cairn looked back impassively at the blue uniformed security officers in apparent mild frustration. There had already been several attempts on Daul's life in the past months, the last of which Cairn had nearly failed to avert. Cairn's professionalism demanded that he allow the security officers to follow them but his pride demanded that he treat them as an equal threat. The look he gave Daul spoke volumes.

"Thross I would not worry about the security staff, they need me alive for the next fifty years or the whole of the Imperial Navy will be at their throats," Daul was confident in the loyalty of Sáclairs crew. They may not like the Inquisitor but they liked living more than they feared him.

The _Endless Bounty _had come within a hair's breadth of annihilation. Some ten years ago the ship was seized by imperial forces at the border of Tau controlled space en route from an imperial world who had recently defected to xenos control. The ship, its cargo, and its crew had been seized by the magistrate on charges of treason and heresy. While the standard procedure in such a situation was generally summary execution of the crew and destruction of the ship to avoid xenos contamination the magistrate had apparently decided that caution was called for, he could not be sure if the Captain had been aware of the planet's defection at the time he left or even as they were trading. A rarity in the empire for sure, the magistrate wanted absolute proof of treason before he ended thousands of lives. In light of this Daul had been called in to investigate the situation and determine the legitimacy of Nathaniel Emanuelle Sáclair. Sáclair was potentially guilty of trading with the heretics but Dual was to discover the truth.

Nathaniel was guilty as sin. He had been regularly doing trade with various institutions at the fringes of space that were questionable at best, but it seemed strange that Sáclair's trading guild was not trying to stop Daul's efforts to root out the truth of Sáclair. They were, in fact, providing him with a plethora of damning information. It was all too easy.

Daul didn't like too easy, it often meant that someone was hiding something far worse and trying to get rid of him, so he started researching the Amon Sui Trading Guild and discovered a far larger issue than a single errant captain. Further investigation revealed that the arrest of Sáclair had less to do with heresy and more to do with simple economics. An astounding amount of trade was ongoing between the supposedly blockaded border worlds and the various trading guilds of the sector, so much so that it would be only a matter of time before a massive imperial retribution would be taken out upon the entire guild. As a way of preserving their image of proper behavior the guild had offered up Sáclair to the magistrate as a sacrificial lamb, someone to point at and say, "here is what we do with heretics in our guild," while still committing greater heresy in secret.

Sáclair was an easy target, he was the last of his house and already had an infamous reputation for breaking the rules and laws he felt were too restrictive for someone of his status. Obedience to authority was anathema to Sáclair, he would rather die than be cowed under the yolk of someone else's control. The evidence provided to the magistrate to convict Nathaniel proved to be enough rope for Daul to use to strangle the guild. The disloyalty and subterfuge of the guild disgusted Daul, Sáclair was far from a perfect man but he seemed to be a good and loyal man or at least as good and loyal as one can expect a pirate to be. Moreover, in spite of his many heresies, Sáclair had a faith in the power of the Emperor that was second do none. True faith was in short supply as of late.

The lowest pits of the malevolent eye were reserved for traitors and deserters, the center of hell itself the home of the great dragon that sits in place and rips the flesh off the greatest traitor of all, Horus thrice damned. This was what Daul's mentor had raised him to believe, an unusual philosophy for an inquisitor perhaps but one that Daul believed wholeheartedly. Such a cold and calculated dismissal of someone so pious and loyal made the Inquisitor's blood boil.

By the time Daul had finished with them and their holdings the once proud and prominent Amon Sui Guild was broken. It's members who had not been declared an excommunicate traitor killed were stripped of property and titles. Daul had bound Sáclair under imperial mandate and commandeered his ship for fifty years and a day, technically making the _Endless Bounty_ an inquisitorial ship and thus beyond the jurisdiction of the Magistrate. Sáclair's heresies would be absolved by doing great works in His name.

The process had worn Sáclair physically and spiritually. His great laugh was less wholehearted and his famous smile no longer seemed to reach his eyes, but then how does a man who's jailer is his only ally react? Sáclair would probably hate Daul for the rest of his natural life. Daul had interrogated him, tortured him, violated the boundaries of his mind, heart, and soul. He had destroyed Sáclair's history and pride, tearing to shreds the guild to which he was bound to service by blood and honor. Then Daul had the unmitigated gall to save Sáclairs life, his crew, and restore his honor in the eyes of the imperial administration. Sáclair would never forgive Daul for saving him or himself for needing to be saved.

The decisions he made in that investigation were not popular ones, the Amon Sui Guild had been well connected even within the inquisition itself. Its members though bereft of title were not without resources and influence. Already there had been several unsuccessful attempts on Dauls life by guild trained assassins bearing the mark of Ska'ra'xo, a death cult devoted to the god Slaaneshi from the hive world of Kag-Gal. They were like most death cultists, insane, uncreative, blood thirsty, and dangerous beyond belief, the Ska'ra'xo had nearly destroyed the Kag-Gal some two centuries earlier. Exactly how they had survived the ensuing imperial purge was unclear but it seemed more than likely the Amon Sui were guilty of having harbored them. The cult was only one in a series of dirty secrets unearthed by Daul, sadly far from the most damming one.

"We are causing as much of a stir as I had hoped," Daul said to the eternally silent Cairn as he flipped the call switch on for a transport tube. A merchant had just walked into a doorframe in his frenzied efforts not to make eye contact with the Inquisitor. "Lets hope we don't actually scare any of the crew to death then."

Like most of the ship the doors to the transport tube were gaudy and overbearing. In the center of a number statues in relief depicting the works of the Emperor and his Primarchs was a truly heinously ugly paining of Sanfal the lesser. Sanfal was a saint known for his fondness of seafarers and mariners who most starship crew in the sector prayed to for guidance. It made sense to have the images in such a well traveled place, it forced the uneducated and illiterate masses to be exposed to their history daily. Daul did however wish that the custom for painting Sanfal the lesser did not call for painting him dying as excruciatingly as the artist could stomach. Seeing Sanfal in pain seemed to comfort the crew, it was as though they believed that the worse pain that Sanfal had gone through on their behalf the less pain that would be in their own life. It was not equally comforting to Daul.

Daul was convinced that this particularly heinous paining of Sanfel the Lesser had been placed on the nearest lift to his quarters intentionally, "He wants me to be off base when I see him, needs me to be off base."

Cairn looked at Daul nonplussed.

Daul laughed, "Honestly how he expected this to offput me I have no idea. We have seen too much you and I. How many years have you been in my service? Twenty... no twenty five isn't it? And we still have a long time to go before either of us is fit to retire."

Cairn's optics refocused confusedly and his shoulders began to shake. The idea that either the Skitarii or the Inquisitor would retire to some resort community for the wealthy, elderly, and infirm with the aging nobility of the core worlds was quite amusing. The Daul, Inquisitor Lord Interrogator and "Cleanser of Boros VII," was an unlikely choice for a life of convalescence and games of regicide with other retirees, as unlikely as a celebration of Horus' birth in the lands of High Terra.

"Oh shut up and get in the lift you augmentic terror."

The lift was already crowded with crew members when the two massive men entered the lift and only continued to fill up more as the lift headed towards the command decks, a sea of the scarlet and gold uniforms of the crewmen of those under Sáclair's command. Noon signaled the end of second shift and the start of third, no amount of fear of the Inquisitor would stop the crew from reaching their duties on time. Like any ship worth its salt the _Endless Bounty_ had strict punishments for the shiftless and the lazy, not the least of which was flogging a man once for every minute late he was to his duties.

Daul and Cairn were not the only non-crew on the lift. There was color scattered in the sea of crimson and gold, a ship of the _Endless Bounty's _size and prestege invariably picked up merchants, pilgrims, travelers and wanderer's over time. Cairn was eyeing them sternly, the Skitarii had never forgiven himself for allowing an assassin near Daul and was prone to extreme mistrust. It was far from uncalled for but this particular group seemed innocuous enough. He doubted that the couple in their full dress formalwear in the corner would be a particular threat, they seemed to engrossed in discussing wedding preparations. Daul followed the direction of Cairn's gaze, smiled, and telepathically whispered, I very much doubt that the couple on their way to ask Sáclair permission to marry are about to attack two men in full armor Skitarii Thross.

Cairn waved a mechandrite dismissively, ignoring the psychic intrusion entirely and simply continuing to focus on the other people on the lift. Daul closed his eyes and focused on the sounds round him. The language of the crew was a flowing form of low gothic combined with some native speech patters from the worlds on which Saclair's ancestors had mustered the crew. Daul had learned the some of the language in his past months on the ship but his mastery thereof had proven difficult as there was no written equivalent to their spoken language. Anything important enough to be written down would be done so in High Gothic rather than the ship's native speech. He could communicate with his own Metzik variant of Gothic, which was similar enough to the High Gothic of the command staff to be understood, but he missed a lot of the subtext of the conversations going round him. His own psychic talents allowed him greater insight but it was far from enough to allow him to have a conversation with the largely illiterate crew.

Still he could understand the gist, though the crew were wont to assume otherwise. The topic of the day seemed to be the last round of So'go'ol, a common game on starships based upon the speed at which members of a team could traverse a maze of cargo crates and score a point by tossing a ball into the opposing team's goal. Each team was distributed shock pistols capable of temporarily disabling a member of the opposing team, a team would win by getting the most points possible before all their team members were disabled. The game had started as a way of training the starship crews to defend against boarding actions but had since evolved into something wholly unrecognizable.

The crewmen were arguing about some bizarre technical terms to do with how one ought to oversee a game properly. There was some contention over if the most recent match had been refereed poorly. The losing team was petitioning for a rematch.

Sporting discussions varied little from planet to planet, the universality of human behavior astounded Daul. His musings on the subject were interrupted by the stopping of the lift. A lean and narrow man wearing purple robes with an orange fringe entered the lift and leveled a look of abject disdain at Daul.

"Zorn Calven," Daul spat out the word like an oath under his breath, "Just perfect."

A navigator of great pride and status, Zorn was one of the three men on the _Eternal Bounty_ responsible for guiding her through the eddies and currents of the warp. His gaunt and pinched face echoed generations of inbreeding between the various families of the Navis Noblitie, the imperial houses of navigators. As a rule navigators were unnerving and off-putting, their appearance bore an etherial air of unnaturalness. They were warp-touched, though they lacked the talent to manipulate its energies but could traverse its currents with grace and ease. No ship in the Empire could navigate without at least one, a fact that Zorn believed grated him a seat a the right hand of the golden throne after death. Basic social courtesy was something that lesser mortals needed to worry about, not navigators.

"Greetings Inquisitor."

"Good morning to you Navigator."

"Inquisitor you know as well as I how useless the idea of day is within a starship. It is always day inside this ship and night sleeps eternally outside our second skin of adamantium."

_Smarmy Bastard, _thought Daul, "And yet I see that the clock is set to the time on Terra, if day and night suit the will of the Emperor I assure you they are good enough for me."

"I'm sure they are Inquisitor."

"What is that supposed to mean."

"Only what you wish for it to," his face turned up in a grin that look stretched and wrong on his face, "We are just making _friendly_ conversation after all."

Zorn reached a hand into his pocket and Cairn tensed imperceptibly, the Skitarii's hand reaching into the fold of his robes where he hid a high powered laspistol, but Zorn only pulled out an elegant snuffbox and sniffed a pinch between two gaunt fingers.

"Sáclair feels he is bound to you Inquisitor."

"Does he now?"

"So it would seem, though I wonder if we truly are. A less pious man than I might harbor hatred for you in secret."

"Would they now?" Cairn's had buried itself in his robes, covertly aiming his pistol at the Navigator. The bulge of the pistol was hidden in the various irregularly shifting bulges of mechandrites and augmentics on his body.

"Indeed most _honorable_ Inquisitor, you have caused the financial ruin or death of some of the noblest and influential families of the sector," Zorn tucked the snuff box away and rubbed his nose delicately.

"Even a navigator must answer for crimes of heresy. A ship doesn't reach a xenos core world or a Chaos planet without the consent of the navigator or foul sorcery," Daul rearranged his cape in a gesture of dismissal, allowing him to cover the left hand that now grasped the blade at his side, "Tell me Navigator do you have anyone in mind who would hold such a grudge?"

"None in _particular_ Inquisitor, you left few enough alive after your vendetta and fewer of the great houses were left blameless in your eyes," he brushed back his hair. His bulbous eyes and ill defined features scrunched on their narrow frame, "Even I lost family to you and my house lost fewer than most."

"I doubt a guiltless man will suffer Navigator."

"How can they be guiltless when innocence is no excuse? The Inquisition is not known for its delicate methods."

Daul scowled at the Navigator but did not answer. The two stood starting at each other expectantly, neither willing to be the first to break the silence. The rift rumbled and shook, echoing with the cheerful talk of the crew who continued on oblivious to the power struggle happening before their eyes. It was a good half hour before the lift reached level 56 and Zorn was forced to back off the lift. As the lift doors closed behind the navigator he stated in a cold voice, "The next man who has suffered at your hands is unlikely to mince words with you in a place where your clockwork man can protect you beneath his skirts."

The doors shut with a resounding clang. Daul turned to Cairn, "Throne help me but I detest that man."

Cairn shook his head frustratedly.

"I know, I know, the part that annoys me isn't that he's an ass, though he is one. Its that I can't tell if he's threatening us or warning us."

Daul sighed, "When we get to Sáclair we're going to have to get him to take Dorn out of storage."

Cairn garbled something off in binary which Daul was certain had been rude.

"Yes we will. I find him as distasteful as you do but we need someone who lacks loyalty issues."

The rest of the trip passed in silence.

–

It will be at least three chapters before this story reaches the crossover. I plan to update this story on tuesdays every other week.

Reviews as always are welcome.

Cheers,

Todeswind


	2. Chapter 2

Security was tight at the entrance to the great hall. Sáclair feared for his own life, an not without good reason. The Amon Sui blamed Sáclair for their fall as much as they did Daul. Daul was not aware of any attempts on Sáclair's life but it was foolish to presume that there had been none. The captain was unlikely to inform the Inquisitor of any breaches in security lest he be left with no other resource. The last attempt must have rattled Sáclair; even Daul was stopped by security.

Daul almost didn't notice that the guard at the diplomatic entrance was flagging him down till he noticed the purplish glow of the portable void shield covering the entrance.

"I'm sorry sir," said the security guard at the checkpoint, "I know who you are but protocol demands that you verify your identity before I allow you through."

Daul eyed the guard exasperatedly. Only a Lionheart, a member of the elite guard in Sáclair's employ, would have the courage to force an Inquisitor to play by the rules. The guard stared stonily at the Daul, face betraying no emption other than mild boredom as he brushed some lint off of the golden embroidery on the silk strap of an elegant but deadly looking hellgun. Daul shook his head. "I really have no time for this Sergeant."

"Not for me to judge sir. Either you verify your identity or you get the slag off this deck," said the Sergeant. Daul glowered at the rudeness and he hastily added, "Sir."

"If I must," Daul shook his head wearily and removed his helmet, cool air brushing his face. The additional security was frustrating but probably necessary.

The Guard nodded and turned to a sleek panel on the wall. He placed his hand on the control console and whispered softly. A faint green glow ran over his hand and a podium shot up in front of the door. The podium was a masterwork of the Adeptus Mechanicus, concealed in what appeared to be a pillar carved from purest marble was a complex network of logic engines capable of unraveling human genetic code. Daul plucked a hair from his head and placed it into the stone bowl on top of the pillar, "Will this take long Sergeant?"

The Lionheart shrugged, "It takes as long as the machine spirit decides it takes sir. I don't make the machines sir, I just baby-sit them."

After a brief period the hair burst in a puff of smoke and the podium shot back into the floor after chiming briefly. Daul turned to the Sergeant who simply shrugged and tapped his comm-bead twice, notifying the guard on the inside to deactivate the shield, "Never doubted it sir, please wait a second for the weapons detector to be shut off before you enter."

"Of course. Come Cairn," the command deck employed a sophisticated piece of ancient technology capable of detecting weaponry. It was of course not without its limits, it was only capable of detecting firearms and metallic weaponry but lacked the sophistication to look for knives or poison, but it provided an effective countermeasure for the sort of hold-out pistols and needle weapons preferred by heretics and assassins. Weapons were normally not allowed into the great hall but Daul was something of a special case.

The security detail not only allowed Sáclair to have obvious weapons on hand, they relied upon it. The entire point of having an Inquisitor was to give him the ability to disobey marked rules and customs in the search of justice, that duty required the use of covert weaponry regularly. Security Chief Auguste had a healthy respect for an inquisitor's capacity for conceal any manner of dangerous and deadly weapons on his personage and had come to the conclusion that the easiest way to avoid violence around the Inquisitor was to simply allow him to keep his weapons as obvious and deadly looking as was possible. There were plenty of officers who still resented Daul's involvement with Sáclair but they tended not to be the sort prone to attack a well armed man in a public space.

The Chief was also relying largely upon the frustratingly correct assumption that if Daul were foolish enough to start a fight that the _Endless Bounty_ would have the manpower to take Daul down eventually. Daul looked around the room, subtly assessing the security staff. They may permit him to carry his weapons with impunity but they were most certainly not leaving him unwatched, "Cairn I suspect that we could kill, what… twenty of the Lionhearts before they managed to take us down if it came down to it."

The skin at Cairn's cheeks stretched in a vestigial smile, pulling at the puckered skin leading to the thin cluster of tentacle like mechandrites hanging from his face, and he shook his head.

"What do you think we could take more of them? I'm spry Cairn but I'm not that good."

Cairn's shoulders shook and he pointed up to the ceiling above them.

"Ah... that might complicate things if it ever came down to it," installed in the ceiling, partially concealed by the hanging crystal of the chandeliers they were mounted inside of were a number of wicked looking cannons. "The workmanship is fantastic. Kerrigan's work you think?"

Cairn nodded emphatically. This was the work of a xenotech expert Magos to be sure; the plasma weaponry was too sophisticated to have been done by someone focusing purely on STC designs. They were elegant and deadly without losing the ostentation that Sáclair adored.

"Remind me to speak with her later," Daul sighed and fixed his helmet firmly on his head, steeling himself for what was to come, "Throne help me but I hate this part."

Given the choice between defeating an armored assault by heretics on an imperial fortress and navigating in the social circles of the rich and well to do of the empire Daul would probably chose the armored assault nine times out of ten. After their public announcement by the Master of Protocol Daul and his adjunct were forced to fight their way through crowd to make their way to Sáclair. The various families milling about in the command deck were hell bent upon engaging with him in long and vapid discussions of tariffs, wine, and rumors.

_Far be if for a suit of power armor to get in the way of gossip,_ thought Daul bitterly.

"Inquisitor have you met my wife?"

"Inquisitor will you be accepting our invitation to the range?"

"Where did you get that fantastic hood and cloak inquisitor?"

In spite of Daul's best efforts he was waylaid by the corpulent and boisterous Master of the Watch, Étienne Sácomer. Like all the senior command staff his face was noble but warped around the temples wherein two augmentic sockets were seated. High-ranking officersregularly underwent augmentic enhancements to allow them to better commune with the ship's systems directly. Usually such connections were sub-dermal and placed along the spine but Sácomer spent days or even weeks at a time immobile at the sensor banks of the ship. Over a period of decades this immobility had taken its toll on Sácomer and forced him to augment his body as his legs became unable to support his own weight. His back was already implanted with the control systems for the spidery augmentic frame he used to suspend his considerable girth.

He was not an easy man to sneak by in the best of times. Upon seeing the inquisitorial livery of Daul's armor Sácomer's wide face curved into a smile, "Daul! My old friend!"

Sácomer based his own personal worth upon the connections he made with powerful people; the more powerful someone was the more excited he was to network with them. Sácomer was under the impression that Daul's decision to save the ship was, either in part of wholly, on his behalf or influenced greatly by his magnificent powers of persuasion. Daul couldn't remember interviewing Sácomer or even having requested his name as part of his investigation but Sácomer was not one to let a little thing like facts get in the way of his own self-image. There was little hope that Daul could duck out of a conversation with the Master of the Watch quickly but there was nothing to be lost by trying, "Indeed Sácomer but I have no time for pleasantries..."

Sácomer laughed boisterously, his girth shaking gelatinously underneath his well pressed uniform, "Nonsense, I'll hear none of that talk. There is always _some_ time for diversion, even for His most valued servants. Come I want you to meet them."

Daul was reasonably sure that statement counted as heresy worthy of a crusade in the Thorian inquisitorial doctrine and briefly regretted not having joined their orders as his protestations of, "really I must insist," and "I have duties to attend to," were totally ignored by Sácomer.

"Inquisitor I insist, I swear if you don't relax eventually you're going to pop," Daul's arguments fell on deaf ears. Daul was too powerful and too controversial for Sácomer to be able to resist dragging Daul along. Even in power armor Daul was not strong enough to fight off the combined strength of the augmentic frame and substantial mass of Sácomer as the fat man pushed him forwards in an adamantium frog march.

Cairns shoulders were shaking so hard with laughter Daul wondered if he was going to do permanent damage to the delicate servos that ran his shoulders. He could hardly blame his attendant, the sight of an inquisitor being led about like a show grox by a puffed up nobleman was comical to say the least. He was one of the deadliest men in the sector and he had been waylaid by the blubberous Master of the Watch without having thrown a punch. Insufferably personable talk and impossibly exuberant cheer are not traits that the Inquisition trains its members to fight off. _God help me if the forces of Chaos ever figure out that we have no weapons against politeness and helpfulness._

The "they" to which Sácomer referred transpired to be a trio of mid level officers, the Chief Docere Medicus of the aft sectors and two officers who's uniforms indicated that their roles on the ship were primarily ceremonial, all of whom looked as displeased to be dealing with the Inquisitor as he was to be dealing with them.

Docere Faest Nor was a droll man with a forgettable face and a fondness for the sound of his own voice. He gave a curt nod of acknowledgment that Daul returned in turn. The medicus disliked the Inquisitor as a matter of principal for a number of reasons that Daul grudgingly respected him for. Faest viewed the crew with a fiercely paternal nature, ensuring the health and well-being of the crew was not simply his profession but rather his calling in life. Daul's method of coercing information from suspected heretics was effective but inelegant. Faest had been responsible for helping heal those who were under suspicion once a subject's questioning had gone dangerously far. The process had not endeared Daul to the medicus in the slightest.

In spite of this the _Endless Bounty _was not without expectations of formality, Faest's professionalism was stronger than his dislike of Daul. Were Daul any other man he might have missed the subtle undertones of scorn in the man's otherwise inscrutable expression, "Greetings Inquisitor."

"Greetings Docere Medicus. It has been a long time since we last met."

The Medicus narrowed his eyes, "And if I had my will it would be longer still."

"What brings you to court today?"

"I was not aware that I needed to have a reason to seek out the company of others," he motioned to the well dressed crowd, "Is not conversation with the best and brightest a goal in and of itself?"

Sácomer chuckled unconcernedly; he was apparently unaware of the history between Daul and Faest. His wide form shook gelatinously with his every giggle, "Come now, Faest! Every time is a good time to have a meeting between friends. Do you not agree Inquisitor?"

Daul opened his mouth to give a pithy reply but Sácomer interjected, "Of course it is! But one bound by duties such as yours must have great reason indeed to grace us with his presence. It is rare enough for you to send up a messenger from your medical ward let alone to come in person. You've made your belief that you should never be farther than an arm's reach from your charges well known."

Faest's smile hardened and some of the forced politeness left his tone, "My business is my own and I will discuss it with Sáclair and no other."

Sácomer jerked as though he had been slapped. He was clearly unaccustomed to being treated this way by the Medicus. The conversation had already gone on far too long for Daul's taste and he could see that it was not heading in a constructive direction. Prolonging this discussion would lead nowhere productive, "Sácomer, if the man wishes to keep his matter private one I have no vested interest in violating his privacy."

The officer on Faest's left snorted in an undignified manner, "Inquisitor, simply by existing you are destined to violate the privacy of others."

Daul turned to face the narrow faced officer and felt a vague sense of recognition. His features were vaguely familiar but that meant little among the upper class of the _Endless Bounty_. Generations of inbreeding had long since homogenized the gene pool making it difficult at times differentiate between the grey eyed and raven haired faces of the various nobles. Still the distaste in the man's voice sounded more personal than professional, "What is your name boy?"

The young officer glared defiantly at the visor of Daul's helmet, "Bertrand Germaine Gauge, brother of Dominique Isabel Gauge."

_That accounts for the boy's defiance then, _Daul's interrogation of Dominique had been more thorough than most. The girl had been hiding a secret in a deep corner of her mind, one that she was concealing from Daul with every fiber of her being. Though his master had been elegantly skilled to the mental arts Daul's own psychic gift was ill suited for delicate work but he made up for it with force of will, his method of garnering information from a subject's mind was dangerous and brutal. So determined was she to keep her secret that the only way to discover the truth of her shame was to strip her mind of all protections. Daul had left her alive, though killing her would probably have been a mercy, _a useless act of hubris that had done the girl more harm than good. Hours wasted on a stupid girl wasting energy on being fearful that her husband might discover her lover. Petty fools actually believe that the Inquisition gives a damn that they are adulterers._

"The Inquisition provides a necessary service by rooting out the worst of the heretics among us, of that there is little doubt," the man's words were slow and deliberate. He was foolish enough to criticize an Inquisitor to his face but apparently not so foolish as to seem a heretic himself, "Your profession demands that privacy and secrecy be torn away. I have witnessed you pursue a man with a secret in his mind and a half truth on his lips with equal fervor as you do for the darkest of heretics."

" _The innocent_ hardly need fear my dismissal of half truths and lies," Daul said witheringly, "I very much doubt that the Medicus is guilty of any crimes that require my attention. I am only interested in truth that may conceal heresy or betrayal. Keep your mundane secrets, my interest is in traitors, not _fools_."

Sácomer blustered and sputtered, the situation had clearly spiraled beyond his initial plans, "Come now men, we're all friends here. All servants of the Golden Throne and whatnot?"

The officer standing between Faest and Bertrand spoke in a hesitant tone, he at least had the common sense to realize the danger in provoking an Inquisitor, "Are we? I mean no offense but as of late we seem to be more devoted to serving the will of His most honorable Inquisition."

"Your ship was conscripted for such duties if you recall correctly child. I have the right to call your ship to duty whenever the Empire requires it."

The officer, apparently bolstered by Daul not having smote him on the spot, continued nervously, "Of course sir, what I mean to say is that we've been ferrying you around on your missions with increasing regularity as of late."

Daul tilted his head impassively; usually the authority of his position was enough to suspend this sort of dissent, at least to his face. Cairn was perhaps right that he needed to either spend less time with the officers on the ship or summarily execute someone in a public place, he was becoming too approachable, "Are you suggesting that I am not acting wholly in the service of His will?"

"No sir, its not that at all," the officer was nervously biting his lower lip, "It's just that, well, sir we are a merchant ship not a ship of the line. Admittedly we are a well-armed merchant ship but you've got us going one on one with things that I'm still not sure how we survived fighting. Wouldn't it better serve your interests to use one of the Black Ships."

_Yes boy they could work but they would only do so if my goal was to declare to the universe about me that I was an Inquisitor, _thought Daul bitterly.

The Black Ships were intended to be well armed and intimidating; they were also massive, cumbersome, and obvious. The Black Ships military applications were secondary to their psychological ones. As the naval arm of the Inquisition they were equipped with munitions and technology beyond the scope of all but the greatest of Imperial Warships. Moreover the Black Ships were designed with the intention of rapidly deploying an exterminatus-extremus solution if such mandate were deemed necessary meaning that every planet being orbited by one was only a hair's breadth from Armageddon. The ships were effective but lacked subtlety. Daul's methods were often direct but he preferred to move in secret when possible. One of the Black Ships raised red flags the second it arrived but a simple rogue trader, no matter how well armed could often pass by unnoticed.

"Boy it is not for you to decide what is and is not necessary for the job of an Inquisitor. This is not your duty and I would prefer you stay silent rather than open your lips and prove your ignorance. "

Faest cleared his throat, "It is, however, mine to see to the health and wellness of this ship. Tell me Inquisitor, do you know how many of the crew died in your last errand?"

"Medicus I have..."

"Three hundred and twenty six souls dead Inquisitor."

"And if we hand not been there to slay the beast how many more souls do you believe it would have sent to the next life? Six hundred? A thousand?" Daul had not shouted, had not even raised his voice but there was a dangerous edge to every word that sharpened with every curt syllable, "I can not plan in advance for every potential outcome Medicus. The warp beast possessing an Imperial ship was unforeseeable but destroying it was our duty. Their deaths were unfortunate but the task was necessary."

Bertrand's anger got the best of his common sense, "We are a merchant ship, we should be hauling cargo not traipsing about the galaxy on some foolish quest. There must be other ships suited to your needs."

Daul smiled behind his mask, "Certainly none as conversant in dealing with xenos as this ship."

"Now see here," Faest had given up all pretense of civility and was staring at Daul in Fury.

"No Faest, I will talk and you will listen," Daul allowed a subtle aura of intimidation to seep into the minds of the three officers, it was perhaps overkill to add the psychic energies but he was in no mood for back talk from any of them, "I am not some Noble Lord on holiday booking a ship looking for adventure who can be bargained with or traded off. I am an Inquisitor. I do not explain my motives to you because I haven't the will, the means, or the time to run every decision I make by committee. I am fighting to preserve the soul of the Empire. If doing so means that I run afoul of your moral sensibilities so be it. Sacrifices have been made and many more will be made before I am through.

Faest opened his mouth to speak but was silenced by the gentle but firm pressure of a mechandrite on his shoulder. Cairn looked him in the eyes, his augmentic optics glowing ominously beneath his cowl, and shook his head firmly, cowing the rage of the Medicus. Nothing good could come from further argument.

Sácomer's round form swayed backwards and forwards on his spidery augmentic frame, struggling for word, "Inquisitor I... that is to say that we..."

"Nothing need be said Sácomer," Daul nodded curtly and motioned to Cairn, "If you'll excuse me I have business to attend to."

Daul had not lied about having business to attend to, though he was grateful for the excuse. In a far corner of the hall stood a half circle of figures in deep red capes and robes, the retinue of Searcher-Magos Kerrigan Frist. Frist was the former head xeno-archeologist and xenotech expert of the Oita Forge at the edge of Tau space. The Magos herself stood in the center of a semi-circle of servitors, attendants, and experts all of whom were taking notes and passing her data-slates as she fiddled with a hololithic display in front of her. The Magos was an old associate of Daul's with an interesting past and a questionable set of security clearances for the information she was regularly able to access.

The specifics of her history remained a mystery, even to Daul, but after discrete questioning and some choice interrogation he had been able to discover the circumstances leading to her exile. About a half century ago the Magos had proposed the incorporation of elements of reverse engineered xenotech gained from the Tau Empire into Imperial technology, specifically into dangerous and often unstable plasma weaponry. Her paper on the matter had been worded carefully and well prepared enough that it was not outright heresy, a wise choice that had probably saved her life. Her suggestions had raised the hackles of the more conservative elements of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Continuing her position at Oita Forge was impossible.

The Forge Lords had given her four choices, to return to Mars to undergo psychological re-evaluation and re-education, to be condemned to death, to be stripped of her implants and exiled from the order, or to devote the rest of her life to searching for a universal STC. The choice had seemed pathetically simple to the Lords of Mars, death was unacceptable, to be stripped of augmentic was unthinkable for a devotee of the machine, and the search for the universal STC was a fool's errand. The STC, Standard Templates of Construction, were archeotech from the Dark Age of Technology. Ostensibly a complete STC would contain the entirety of technological knowledge gained at mankind's peak, great and powerful knowledge that could be used to bring the universe to heel. What little STC knowledge had been discovered by the Adeptus Mechanicus had been fragmented and corrupted with time. The discovery of a complete standard template of construction was unlikely if not wholly impossible. When Kerrigan Frist had chosen the quest it had no doubt been a shock for the Lords of Mars, it meant that until the Magos discovered one of the STC she would not be allowed to step foot on a Forge World till the end of her quest. The Lords of Mars had forgotten one crucial detail of the duties of a Searcher. Any Searcher would be granted wide powers in what technology and resources could be employed in search of the STC including otherwise forbidden technology. In her persecution Kerrigan had gained everything she ever desired.

The search for the STC was a fool's errand but she was no less dedicated to her task in spire of this, her love for her broad authority was only matched by her desire to prove her own validity. In her mind discovering the STC would prove to the universe that she had been correct about the application of xenotech and her theories were favored by the Omassiah.

She could not, however, make use of any ships bearing the cog of the Adeptus Mechanicus. She had spent years traveling from ship to ship and world to world before Daul caught wind of her exile and proposed an alliance between Kerrigan and Sáclair. Sáclair provided Kerrigan with transport to the far reaches of space in search of any clues as to the location of the STC and Kerrigan provided Sáclair with her own unique technological knowledge and skill. The Magos' relationship with Sáclair was far more amiable than Daul's own, the Captain found the exchange of favors and services more acceptable when the exchange was equal. Daul was a bit envious.

Daul viewed the semi-circle cautiously; it was unwise to approach the Magos unannounced. Her enthusiasm for her job often overwhelmed her awareness of her surroundings, including where her mechandrites were waving. Her attendants jumped, ducked, bobbed and weaved around Kerrigan. Years of service to the Magos had trained them with the acrobatic skills necessary to survive working in her service.

"No. No. No. That will not do at all. The power ratio is all wrong," one of her mechandrites swooped down into a bag carried an attendant and ripped out the slim form of a data slate, "The calculations ought to be correct, work you piece of slag."

Daul approached her as slowly and quietly as his power armor would allow, trying to ignore the shaking of Cairn's shoulders in response to a series of derogatory epithets screeched in binary, "Magos Frist. Do you have a moment to talk?"

Daul's next words were cut short as the blurry form of a servo skull whipped by his head, carrying a scroll of some sort to the irate Magos. Kerrigan snatched the scroll without looking at it and tossed it onto a pile of similar scrolls haphazardly piled on a silver plate carried by a particularly beleaguered looking servitor. Daul looked at Cairn who simply cocked his head and looked right back.

"Well do you intend to give me a hand here?"

Cairn's brow raised in amusement.

"You have got to be kidding me. Still?"

Cairn shrugged, if Daul was going to be foolish enough to try and get between a Magos and her machines he could damn well do it without his help. Magos Kerrigan continued her frenzied argument with the hololith, blissfully unaware of her attendants and servitors ducking and weaving round her furiously flailing mechandrites, "Work you useless over designed piece of Cadian junk! You are well within acceptable limits of functioning."

After the third time Daul tried to approach the Magos but was buffeted back by a stray mechandrite, Daul lost all pretense of politeness and simply superimposed a psychic suggestion upon his speech. Daul's voice reverberated ominously as he shouted, "Kerrigan if you do not stand still for ten seconds I will blast that hololith into a pile of smoldering slag. _Stop now_."

Startled by the overpowering psychic suggestion the Magos jerked to a halt, her mechandrites flailing in the air. Then, just as suddenly as she had frozen Kerrigan relaxed and turned to Daul smiling as her many snaking mechandrites relaxed and coiled over her shoulders and around her waist, "Daul, subtle as always I see."

"I find my job is often served though directness."

Kerrigan laughed, the vox caster through which she spoke was tinny and hollow but maintained a distinctly feminine tone, "How long were you standing there?"

One of the squat attendants to her left popped up, "The better part of ten minutes mistress."

Kerrigan scowled at her attendants, "The Inquisitor was here for that long and none of you thought to announce his presence? I expect more of you."

"Of course mistress," parroted back the attendant. His voice sounded sure but the look in his eyes betrayed his doubts about interrupting his mistress in the future.

Kerrigan cracked her neck with a resounding pop and shifted her attention back to Daul, "Now Daul, what is it that you need?"

"You actually, not to put too fine a point on it."

The Magos tittered, "How forward of you Daul."

Daul smiled bemusedly behind his mask, Magos Frist was about the least feminine creature in the universe. Having long ago sacrificed the majority of her biological parts in lieu of mechanical ones it was quite possible that the flesh of her face and brain were the only organic parts left in her body.

"You know what I meant Kerrigan. I need your technical expertise on a matter best discussed in private."

"Is there any reason to keep this matter a secret from my staff," Kerrigan begun to motion for her staff to organize the various scrolls, seals, and data slates lying haphazardly behind her.

"None in particular, they'll end up having to know in order to assist you but I would prefer not to discuss it in such a public setting. The Amon Sui still have agents in Sáclair's crew and sabotage is not beyond them."

"I shouldn't worry too much about it," Kerrigan waved her hand dismissively.

"Magos Frist," Daul started exasperatedly, "You know as well as I that the walls have ears."

"If they do I can assure you they'll go deaf," Kerrigan screeched a long string of binary in to the air. A dozen cherub like servitors fluttered down from the ceiling in a wide circle on paper thin wings. Stretched between them they carried a web of golden filaments shining with a dim silver light. The cherubs swooped round the half circle of Kerrigan's staff and draped the web like a spidery tent.

"A privacy filter?" Daul looked up at the silky strands of gold, "Dear Magos you've been holding out on me. Where did you find one this elegant?"

"Ah ah ah," Kerrigan waved a single finger with every ah in front of Daul's visor, "That would be telling."

Daul snorted in an undignified manner and was immediately grateful for the privacy filter.

Kerrigan's mechandrites twisted from her waist and shoulders and planted themselves on the ground, weaving themselves into a makeshift seat upon which the Magos perched, "And I believe that you are the one with a story to tell me."

"Indeed," Daul's voice darkened, "Are you aware of Soren Faust."

"I presume you refer to the Inquisitor who went mad about a century ago? Yes I do...only in the vaguest of terms mind you, it's difficult to figure out which stories told about him are true and which are gross exaggerations," Kerrigan smiled and rubbed at the vox caster jutting from her neck, "And quite frankly his destruction of the Arturus VIII forge is enough that I need know little else except that he earned every bit of hatred the Lords of Mars felt for him."

"Yes, that would be the one. He got it into his head that the only way for the Empire to service was to start incorporating Xenos technology into the empire."

Kerrigan gave Daul a pointed look, "So did I Daul."

"Magos you can hardly compare the two points of view," Daul shook his head, "You wished to allow us to use the weapons of the enemy to help destroy them. Faust went... farther..."

It was a gross understatement; Soren Faust's crimes were heinous in the extreme. Only a handful of crimes could be proven to be the work of Faust but that was only because worlds touched by his hand often needed to be purged with virus bombs and cyclonic torpedoes before an investigation into the cause of the problem could even be considered. The prohibition against the use of xenos technology often confused the more liberal minded members of the Administratum Imperialis, at least till they were granted security clearances sufficient to view the aftereffects of unrestricted access to xenotech. In the case of Faust, the only universally verifiable fact that they had been able to determine was that he was trying to bind human and alien biological traits, creating nightmarish half-breed creatures.

Kerrigan's tone became abruptly businesslike, "Cairn I have aided you in fighting the greatest of Heretics if you wish my aid do not insult me with the use of such obvious euphemism. 'Went farther' my hat."

Daul raised his left hand to his chest, "Kerrigan I mean no offense but honestly I'm not entirely sure what his crimes are."

Kerrigan paused for a moment, "Were, you mean were Inquisitor."

"No Magos," Daul tapped his gauntleted hand on the armor of his chest plate, "I do not."

Kerrigan made the sign of the cog over where her heart had once been and hissed, "The bastard lives!"

"It would seem so, it's either him or someone who has taken up his mantle," Daul pulled a data crystal out a pouch at his side and handed it to Kerrigan, "Either way I intend to ensure that the mantle ends here. He's holding a world on the southern rim hostage."

"The whole world?"

"It's _Belzafest_ Kerrigan. There is hardly more than an outpost on that scrap of rock. But the colonists claimed that Faust is on the rock with them."

Kerrigan sighed, "If it is him you know what happened to the colonists after they send their warning."

"Yes, Faust is not known for his forgiving nature. He cannot engage in his favored tactic of destroying the settlement and moving on however," A measure of sad pride leaked into his voice, "The damned fools on the colony used the station's void shields to cut Faust's ship in half as he was entering the docking bay. The arrogant bastard was so sure he could scare the colonists into submission that he never saw it coming."

"Did they destroy his cadre of half breeds?" Kerrigan said hopefully.

"Sadly no," Daul winced, "Some of them perhaps but I suspect the majority of them survived. Foul creatures they may be but exposing them to the vacuum of space has only proven to be marginally effective in killing them. For the moment we will have to settle for them being confined to a set space."

"Damn," Kerrigan leaned back on her makeshift seat, "And I suppose that the void shield on the outpost is strong enough that we won't be able to take it out directly?"

"A dome shield, powerful enough to take a single shot from a nova-cannon," Daul smiled half-heartedly, "One of Oita design actually."

"I suppose that that is simply par the course."

"Kerrigan I need to ask you for a favor but I fear I ask for too much."

"Daul ask and you will have it."

Daul leaned in and whispered.

Kerrigan laughed, "You don't ask for much do you Daul?"

"And still I ask," Daul stared pointedly, "Can you do it?"

Kerrigan nodded pensively, "I can but I'm going to need you to convince Sáclair to give me two boarding torpedoes, and power from the shields. I mean a _lot_ of power from the shields."

"I will ask."

"Daul," Kerrigan started in a low voice.

"Yes Kerrigan?"

"I want him dead."

"That would seem to be the consensus on the matter."

Kerrigan nodded and squawked in binary. The cherubs carrying the privacy barrier fluttered away as quickly as they came. Daul looked across the room to the distant sight of the Sáclair's throne, grimacing slightly at the prospect of having to wade this way through the well meaning but blisteringly dull noblemen determined to force themselves into his social circle. Just as he was about to sign for Cairn to follow him Kerrigan giggled girlishly, "There is a better way of getting Saclair's attention you realize."

"Indeed Magos?"

"You're a psychic aren't you?"

Daul had little to say in response, the solution was blindingly obvious, too obvious for someone as absurdly obtuse as an Inquisitor to remember was at his disposal. He bit back a biting reply and swallowed his pride before muttering a curt, "thank you," that only resulted in more giggles from Kerrigan. Sending a message to another person via psychic means was a relatively simple task requiring little more than a line of sight and a force of will, both of which Daul had. Sáclair would be irked by the intrusion into his mind, but Sáclair was going to be frustrated no matter what. Daul focused his mind on the distant presence of Sáclair and whispered, "_Sáclair I would have a word with you at your earliest convenience, which I presume would be imminent."_

And then he waited. For a second he was sure that Sáclair had not understood his message or had presumed that it was a flight of fancy, psychic messages often were interpreted as such, but one of the brightly festooned guards of Sáclair approached him carrying one of the absurdly elaborate laser rifles favored on the _Endless Bounty_ in one hand and a cane in the other. The guard stood in front of Daul and waved his cane twice, guiding a floating marble platform to the ground in front of him. The hidden antigravity generators hummed dangerously and created a bight blue pulsing sheen beneath the platform, cracking on the gold embossed onyx tiles of the floor. The guard turned wordlessly to Daul and motioned to the platform.

"I presume Sáclair got my message?"

The guard nodded curtly.

"Then I shan't keep him waiting," Daul headed for the center of the platform trying to ignore the hideously gaudy mosaic of Kitnik the Abjured on beneath his feet, "Come Cairn."

Once the Inquisitor and Skitarii were safely on the platform the guard muttered something into his sleeve, presumably activating a hidden communications bead. The platform began its steady rise to the lofty height upon which sat the throne of Sáclair. Daul grudgingly had to admit that the floating island of ivory and gold that made up the throne of Sáclair was impressive. The Damascus IV shipyards were unique in their ability to weave simple pieces of archeotech together for greater purposes, which is probably why the Biel Tan Eldar had been so keen to destroy them. The shipyards of Damascus now only existed in record but their remaining works were impeccable.

The massive throne itself hung from the ceiling as part of a massive stalactite of archeotech and artwork. Its sides glimmered with the light from a thousand delicate looking silvery filaments, each snaking their way from the chair of the throne up to one of the jade statues of former Captains. The statues and the great seal of the Lion actually covered up the entrances to the funereal vaults for the ships Captains in which the minds of the former leaders of the _Endless Bounty_ were eternally kept in a near death state, sustained by a continuous bath of juvat-restoration chemicals and nutrients. The current Captain of the _Endless Bounty _was for all intents and purposes just a continuation of the experiences of the former one. Sáclair felt and remembered everything from the previous generations of his family as though he had lived it himself. Some of the former Captains had even taken to marrying the wives of their predecessor, a tradition that Daul was infinitely grateful that Sáclair did not take part in as the position had historically been hereditary. It would have made official gatherings with the Captain awkward.

Sáclair's throne served as a hard line connection to the ship and to the former Captains in the even that his own wireless sub-dermal implants connecting him to the ship's systems were to fail. In a very real way Sáclair represented the living connection between the past, present, and future of the Bounty. The past generations provided advice and council to Sáclair much as he would one day provide his successor. Considering his wide range of historical experience he had to draw from dating back to the Age of Apostasy, Sáclair had a well deserved ego and a vehement hatred of being controlled. Sáclair despised Daul, though an outsider would probably never know it. As the platform finally reached the throne, Sáclair was already jauntily and effortlessly perched upon this throne holding a goblet of wine and smiling brilliantly.

"He's enjoying this altogether too much"

Cairn shrugged and looked at Daul.

"I'm so glad that you find this amusing. I plan put you into an equally amusing situation later."

Even as the platform reached arm's length of the throne Sáclair continued to sit upon this throne, smiling, drinking his wine, lecherously eyeing one of his concubines, and wholly refusing to acknowledge the two meters of power armored psycher in front of him as one might ignore a petulant child. Daul resisted the powerful urge to shoot Sáclair and instead bowed his head as Cairn's vox caster played a recording of Daul's various titles and permissions. An attendant wearing an anti-gravity harness floated down and took Daul's scrolls and seals from Cairn and quickly verified them, disappearing into the ceiling as quickly as he came. Technically speaking security required that anyone presenting themselves to Sáclair provide a blood sample to verify their identity but Sáclair was not so crass as to force Daul to publicly humble himself by spilling blood on the altar used to verify DNA. Such pettiness was beneath Sáclair, not far beneath but still beneath him.

A servitor gave a hollow announcement of Daul's presence and Sáclair perked up in false surprise, as though he had not been staring directly at Daul for the past ten minutes, crossed his arms, and leaned back into the plush leather of his throne, "Well, it would seem that Inquisitor Daul is gracing my humble presence once again. Did you miss me Hildy?"

"We have business to discuss Captain."

Sáclair scoffed and drank deeply from his flagon of wine, "Come now Hildy, you know old _friends_ like us are on a first name basis. I see you more often than I used to see my third wife, Throne rest her soul."

"Captain Sáclair I have no time for schoolyard bickering."

"She was also a nosy busybody with no sense of fun. When was the last time you simply let loose and left the rest of us to our own devices? There will be still be heretics in the morning."

"Not if I've had the chance to kill or convert them all by nightfall."

Sáclair laughed derisively, "Daul can I show you something?"

"If I say no will it make any difference?"

"Doubtful," Sáclair waved his hand at the ceiling of the hall activating a massive hololithic display. A swirling mass of green holographic stars blinked into existence, swirling about the room. The sounds of polite applause and genuine interest emerged from the crowd below. By then fact that the Inquisitor and the Captain were in conference was knowledge and the crew below were wildly speculating on the topics of conversation between the two most important persons they knew of. Sáclair seemed unaffected by the attention, "Beautiful isn't it? Space as far as we know it to be. This wide section is what human's rule."

"An Empire worthy of the God Emperor's dominion."

"Well said, but the Empire is comprised of millions of systems containing countless worlds, moons, outposts, and colonies. Uncounted trillions of faithful and doubtless millions of heretics live and die each day."

"Countless more of the faithful."

"Even so do you plan to catch them all?"

"You know full well I do not," Daul glowered, "A man may only do as much good as he may."

"Or as much evil," Sáclair snapped his fingers and a floating cherub approached him with a platter of meats. Sáclair reached out with a gloved hand and grabbed a pinch of the savory food, "Have you eaten yet Inquisitor? The grox is exquisite."

Daul started tapping his foot impatiently, "Sáclair I have no time for our usual games."

"My dear Hildy, time is always a luxury. It should be spent sparingly. Life is the one precious commodity we all have a shortage of in equal measure."

"And you're wasting mine. What do you know about Belzafest?"

Sáclair smiled wryly as he chewed a bite of the fresh grox, "You have what I know on the subject already."

"Sáclair I need a summary of events not the entire library of geographic and spatial history predicted for the past and present."

"I was being specific."

"No," Daul's voice cracked with a subtle aura of psychic energies, "You were being an insufferable waste of energy and whit. If I had a thousand years I would not be able to pick out the information I need."

"Nonsense you're a bright lad."

"You are hardly capable of judging that."

"IF you were any other man I would call you a presumptuous ass and have you marooned on the loneliest scrap of terraformed earth in sight, _Inquisitor._"

"And if you were any other man I would have shot you through the head and scuttled your ship on the nearest moon. Fortunately for the both of us we can only be who we are. So once again we find ourselves in the position where I need what you have."

"Indeed," Sáclair settled back into his cushioned seat.

"Do not force me to be so crude as to remind you of your debts owed."

It was a low blow, one that Daul would not normally use. Sáclair's face briefly contorted into a look of pure malice before snapping back to the blustering image of the spoiled prince, "Preston, the data slate please."

Preston, an old and particularly disagreeable looking servant in a spotless white suit approached on a gravity harness carrying a Data slate. Cairn snaked out a mechandrite to take it but Preston seemed unconvinced that he should hand it over till Sáclair waved his hand dismissively at Cairn. Preston shrugged passed the slate over and returned to wherever it was he came from.

"Inquisitor I wasn't lying when I said that I was giving you all I had on the matter. In so far as I can tell Belzafest is, for lack of a better word, gone."

"Gone? How does one disappear a planet?"

"Inquisitor I cannot pretend to guess, this is more your field of expertise. I have no idea what lies at the colony but your quarry has either great power or dangerous allies."

"Both I'm afraid, probably worse that even you fear. We are going after a nightmare. Have you set course for where the planet supposedly was?"

"I have. Though our route is destined to take us through some sections of tormented space rarely traveled."

"That is not altogether comforting Captain."

"It shouldn't be. We are going to be traveling through undercurrents of the Delvian Maw. It's a place of ill will and bad rumor. The oldest of my ancestors tell me tales of the nightmares that lurk within that seem like ghost stores. I can't be sure how much of them are true, the oldest of my predecessors are quite senile, but there are enough similarities between their narratives that it troubles me."

"Any truth to the rumors?"

Sáclair laughed bitterly, "If starships avoided every sector of space with a ghost story and a rumor of evil we would simply fly in circles around Holy Terra. No matter where we go there is always the risk of deamonic incursion or the like. The Jaws of the warp are omnipresent."

"Yes but recent events have shown the wisdom in trusting to rumors and superstition. I was not simply coincidence that the _Martirio de los Naufragios_ was possessed by the warp beast."

"Then it is good that I have an _expert_ in such matters traveling onboard my ship then is it not," Saclair's voice dripped with sarcasm.

"Indeed you are," Daul ignored the Jab.

"I do have a matter to discuss with you as well Inquisitor."

Daul was reasonably certain he knew the topic to which he referred. It had been an unspoken point of contention for months, "Do you now? Which matter is that?"

"Our guest in solitary confinement in the detention center. Four fingers, bright yellow, hard to miss."

"I have nothing to say on that matter."

"Fantastic for you," Sáclair sipped at his wine, "I do."

"I suppose I should have expected that."

"He wants to see you. Damned if I know why he is so wildly loyal to you, you got his entire brood killed."

"They were honorable deaths, and it was only the end of a small portion of the blood line. Their bodies were sent back to the tribe to be consumed and absorbed back into their gene pool. He wants a similar honorable death."

"Why don't you just kill him already and be done with it. It's cruel to keep him caged as you have."

"The comforts of the xenos are not my concern, but there is another more pressing reason why I have not."

"Which is?"

Daul chuckled, "I gave him my word."

"And that is enough to risk yourself and this entire ship?"

Daul closed his hand and silenced the captain, "If I break my word I am unworthy of my office and a craven liar. In my trade I find that my own honor is more valuable than any other tool I have at my disposal."

Sáclair raised an eyebrow, "There are times where I cannot figure out if you really are that insufferably noble and scrupulously honest or just alarmingly tactical in your speech."

"They are often the same."

"That you had such... Esoteric labor on retainer was something of a shock for me. If memory serves the couple of weeks I spent in your care was for a crime of association much less severe than what you yourself have committed."

"I was supposedly sending them on a suicide mission. My superiors were apprised of my intentions and approved of my decision to do so. Sending xenos to their doom is well within the boundaries of my authority," Cairn shifted to Daul's right, the Skitarii was not especially happy that the xenos had survived, "That any of them at all managed to walk away was nothing sort of a minor miracle and a testament to their field craft."

"But why keep him after he survived? Certainly you could have abandoned him on that moon. Even if you don't kill him why keep the xenos around, especially considering his disgusting appetites?"

"It is foolish to waste such a valuable tool. He is bound to die by my hand or in my service, and as I have denied him the former I am left with the latter."

"I don't like him," Sácomer downed the rest of his wine in a single throaty gulp.

"Nor do I, just keep him under lock and key with those hounds of his. And for Throne's sake warn the guards not to talk to him. We may yet have need of him."

"We reach the planet in ten hours Inquisitor," Sánclair said wearily, "You'd best prepare for the assault."

"Yes I that would be wise," Cairn tapped Daul's shoulder and passed him a dataslate, "Of course Cairn how foolish of me."

Sáclair looked amusedly at the Skitarii, he seemed to enjoy Cairn's silent role as mother hen to the Inquisitor greatly, "And what pray tell are you forgetting?"

"Kerrigan needs to make some modifications to the ship for this assault, your ship is not properly equipped for land warfare so we're going to have to improvise a bit. The details are on the datapad. And I need the Dorn unit taken out of storage, Kerrigan's people can do it but I need your approval to activate an arco-flagellant onboard your ship."

"What drives this obsession of yours to bring such foul things on my beautiful ship?" Sáclair accepted the dataslate and looked over it, his face lighting up with amusement as he read along, "This plan is almost entirely suicidal for you if it doesn't work perfectly."

"Will you do it?"

"I certainly wouldn't want to seem like I wasn't a team player now would I?"

* * *

Punishments within the Imperial justice system are often scaled differently from planet to planet depending on the crime, the severest punishment being the process of conversion to a servitor. Most condemned to lobotomy and conversion to a mindless cybernetic servitor are traitors in some way or another, those who embezzled imperial tithes or who sold state secrets to the enemy, but those condemned to the worst crimes of heresy are sometimes punished by a servitor conversion into an arco-flagelant. The process by which one becomes an arco-flagellant is painful and long by design rather than out of necessity, a punishment reserved for the lowest of heretics, traitors, and cowards. A criminal found guilty of egregious crimes against the Empire would be taken from the Cult of the Emperor by the Adeptus Mechanicus and reforged into a weapon. The subject was lobotomized of their higher thought functions and subconsciously molded to accept hypnotic commands. The flagellants spent most of their existence in a near comatose state, pumped full of narcotics and sedatives and forced to listen to soothing songs of praise to the Emperor and condemnation of heretics. It would not even be able to complete basic tasks without constant direction from a user.

Unlike the generally docile servitor however, the portions of the brain capable of memory and anger are left in tact. They remember how to hate, and that they hate, but not who they hate and why. They associate the prayers to the Emperor and Imperial heraldry with the blissful feeling of nothingness that saves them from the all too real feelings of pain and rage that otherwise plague them. On command a flagellant's narcotic drips can be disabled, turning the flagellant into a beast of pure rage and hatred. The flagellant will kill anything in its path, friend or foe, with the exception of its master and anyone bearing his seal. The flagellant is a loathsome creature but an often necessary one.

Dorn-746 was renamed for the Sainted Rogal Dorn for whom the day of celebration on which he was converted was held. In life "Dorn" had been Sotu'an Taka a criminal found guilty of committing a series of ritualistic murders he believed would elevate him to godhood. In life he had been cruel, calculating, and untrustworthy in his near death like state he was a spirit of pure rage. Daul had personally overseen his arco-flagellentation procedures, had watched his eyes glass over as lumps of brain had been pulled out by delicate mechandrites but Dorn still unnerved Daul slightly. Dorn may have had the sentience of a toaster but his thick beard and cruel smile were the same as they had always been.

Daul hated that smile, it reminded him of corpse mounds and sacrificial altars, the cornerstones of Dorn's former life as High Priest of the Zok'nor'oka-tek. Even so the flagellant servitor had proven invaluable, the berserker was dead useful in a pinch and Daul all too often had need of his brutality.

The cell in which Dorn-746 was kept on the _Endless Bounty_ was actually a retrofitted servitor processing cell. A sturdy chair sat in the middle of the small ferrocrete cell upon which sat a man bound tightly with shackles of adamantium. Numerous intravenous tubes and wires dangled down from the ceiling, lazily snaking their way down to the various interface ports that pockmarked Dorn's hunched body. His arms, shacked with triple the chains of any other part of the body, ended in long barbed whip like appendages where his fingers ought to have been.

The room was pitch black and silent save for the slow dripping of condensation off of coolant lines and the soft ragged sound of Dorn's own troubled breath. As the door to Dorn's cell creaked open and light pierced the darkness Dorn twitched slightly.

The sound of men's shuffling feet in the tiny space echoed deafeningly. The two men's well-pressed uniforms seemed oddly stretched in the dim light of a single glow globe. If Dorn was aware of their presence he gave no sign. The taller of the two switched on a handheld lamp and moved towards the construct cautiously, rumors of the unstoppable killing machine of the Inquisitor were widespread on the bounty and he was unwilling to test the validity of just how invincible the flagellant was. The two carefully stepped over the tubes and cords, making their way to the center.

The shorter one eyed the nutrient feed warily and whispered, "It's a standard interface, let's just be done with it and get out of this eerie damn cell."

His fellow reached into a leather pouch, "Are you sure we aren't going to activate it?"

"I doubt it, but if we do at the very least there won't be enough of us left for them to do to us what they did to this poor bastard."

"You're sure of the Inquisitor's orders?"

"Gold level encryption straight from the command deck, I double checked. We come here are start stage one of the ambulatory processes for the servitor."

"Do you even know what that means?"

"I know it means I take this syringe, " he said pulling a long needle out of his satchel, "And plug it into that man's IV feed tube."

"But why isn't a tech priest here for this, hell even a Churegon?"

"Tech boys been commandeered by Kerrigan's lot, and whatever the Inquisitor's got planned has got the Chief Docere freaking out over how many wounded they can deal with at once," he had started to plug the syringe into its place in the machine, "And let's be honest, if this thing goes ape it's probably better to lose two ratings than it is to lose a tech priest or a medic."

"Not really a comfort sir."

"It isn't really supposed to be," the machine had started to absorb the liquid in the syringe into the IV, "Just keep your gun on it."

"Will a shotgun be enough to keep this thing down if it goes pear shaped?"

"Should be enough to give us the time to keep shooting it in the face till it actually _stays_ dead."

"Makes sense I suppose."

"Course it does," the first said as he wiped his hands on his trousers, "You think too hard about these things. It's why you never seem to get a promotion and I do."

"Fine, can we get the hell out of here then? The Inquisitor will be here to pick the damnable thing up soon and I'd prefer not to see the Inquisitor."

"Why, you got something to hide?"

"The guy makes my skin crawl," he shuddered, "He can read minds from what I hear."

"Well if we do see him he won't read anything from me other than a powerful need to eat. To the eye with that bolt magnet of an Inquisitor. We've done what's ours."

"You don't have to tell me twice, the freak's keeps twitching."

The two left quickly and shut the door, once again leaving the bound form of Dorn alone in the darkness, fidgeting.


	3. Chapter 3

The transition from warp-space to real space is not often a pleasant one. There is a cold sensation and a shifting of pressure along the edge of ones senses. The transition at the edge of the Belzafest colony space was smooth, alarmingly so. The physical sensations felt during real space reversions were there for a reason, the laws of physics were different in warp-space than in real space. The gellar field around a starship could limit the effects of the altered physics, but never wholly eliminate them. That Belzafest's surrounding space was so saturated enough in warp energy to negate this, an ill omen of things to come. Whatever means being employed by Faust apparently relied more on obscurity and misdirection at the moment but Sáclair shuddered to think of the raw power needed to shift the currents of the warp.

The bridge, usually teeming with people, had been vacated with the exception of active duty crewmembers and Sáclair's own personal staff. The sounds of footfalls echoed ominously off the onyx floor as ensigns, ratings a tech priests shuffled between the various interface-chairs into which the command staff were hard wired. There was a dull hum from the rapidly shifting arrays of faux stained glass hololithic readouts and a watery throbbing noise from the coolant tubes heading to the base of Sáclair's own throne.

Belzafest itself was a relatively unimportant scrap of space. It held no tactical or mineral resources worth speaking of and was incapable of yielding vegetation. It would be a wholly dead world were it not for it's archeological value. Beneath the poison skies of Belzafest lay the remnants of an ancient xenos civilization that supposedly had contact with Holy Terra during the Dark Age of technology. In spite of their apparent modernity the species had been utterly destroyed, wholly wiped from the annals of history. Now only their crumbling cities and mummified bodies gave any hint to how they had lived or why they died. It was a matter of academic curiosity but ostensibly little else. It's importance within xenology and theoretical xenobiology circles it had been provided with a number of simple defence systems to defend it from pirates and raiders. The vast majority of Belzafest space had been mined with plasma charges and stationary gun turrets to ensure that the only safe approach to the planet was along a single corridor of space between the two moons, placing approaching ships directly in the line of fire of an ancient and oversized point defense array. An array that was no doubt under Faust's control by now. Most Captains would want at least a heavy cruiser or a star dreadnaught to break that sort of blockade.

Sáclair was not most Captains. Breaking that sort of a blockade with the lightly armed and armored _Endless Bounty_ was the sort of challenge he lived to meet. Like his fathers before him Sáclair was linked into the minds and memories of his ancestors, granting him the wealth of their knowledge but condemning him to constantly measure his own worth against that of his predecessors. Each member of the collective had competed some great act that made him "worthy" of joining their ranks. He could think of no greater hell that joining their ranks in either shame or obscurity. Frustrating though it was to admit, the Inquisitor was probably Sáclair's best route to an act that none of his predecessors or successors could hope to match. The assault on Belzafest would not be that act but it would be wonderful practice. Sáclair licked his lips in anticipation as he closed his eyes and folded his mind into the ship's systems.

This was going to be fun, "To the Eye with this miserable scrap of rock."

Rather that taking the safe corridor between the planet's two moons Sáclair gave the orders to enter the minefield around the planet at full speed. The mines themselves were of Oita design, activated by the ambient energies of a ships shields. An unshielded ship could theoretically pass through the field unharmed provided that it did not trip one of the various proximity sensors imbedded inside the mines. The proximity sensors were less accurate than those detecting void shields, the only ships larger than a cutter that were either armored enough to not worry about taking damage from the mines were of Orkish or Chaos design, substantially larger and better armed than the Bounty. It was a terrible gamble but Sáclair had always been a betting man if only in part because he preferred to play games in which he knew how to cheat properly. In this case his ace in the hole had come from Kerrigan, who's knowledge of Oita made mines was second to none.

"Ten seconds till we enter the field sir," Illrich, head of the triad of Navigators, stood to Sáclair's left with his eyes closed as he listened to the seemingly insane ramblings of the astropathic choir.

"Good," He flipped a switch on the left arm of this throne, activating the ship-wide intercom, "All hands prepare to enter the minefield. Close all bulkheads and blast doors. I want full decompression safety procedures in place we're turning off the shields."

The _Endless Bounty's _engines burned brightly as the ship swam forward towards the bright orange ball of Belzafest. It's shields flickered briefly then died. "This will work," Sáclair said to one of his more nervous looking concubines. Then to himself, "Thishad damn well better work."

The ship lurched forwards elegantly into the night, it's matte black hull and golden prow reflecting the pales orange glow of Belzafest. Its movements were slow and painful, it was a ship designed for speed and thus ill equipped for the sort of delicate maneuvers that Sáclair had planned. Sáclair would gladly gut anyone who suggested his ship would not be up to the task, this would just be another story of the _Endless Bounty _spitting in the eye of fate to be told over wine, women and absinth in a years time. Still, it was best not to tempt fate and Kerrigan's intimate knowledge of the spacing and design would prove to be essential.

Sáclair breathed deeply and pulled the neural interface cable from the arm of his chair. The sliver cord felt cool in his hands and Sáclair had to labor to hide his excitement, directly interfacing with the ship's machine spirit was bracing. As the cool metal of the interface locked into the sub-dermal connection at his neck his body began to twitch and shake, his mind struggling to cope with the myriad of new sensations. His physical body now only felt like a small part of the greater body of the ship, his urges of the flesh dwarfed by the rushing cold of the void whipping at the ship's sides.

He abruptly close his eyes to stop himself from being overwhelmed by his mind trying to overlay the images from his own eyes and those being fed into his mind by the sensors. The minefield was all round him, so close he felt like he could reach out his arm and touch them.

"God I love that woman," Kerrigan's alterations tot he sensors were perfect; the electronic countermeasures of the Oita mines were wholly ineffective. The most sophisticated of Oita cloaking technologies laid naked before him.

"Sir, your orders," it was all Sáclair could to stop himself from just shooting the rating in the head for interrupting his moment with the ship. Sáclair shook his head, he was letting glorious sensations of space overwhelm his judgement. There was work to be done, "Mark three Z access, rotation six. Fire left thrusters on my mark."

"Yes sir."

Navigating through the field of mines would be a delicate task. The ship would have to navigate through the narrow passages between the explosives and make hard turns at exact moments. Sáclair felt the soft caress of microscopic space debris as the ship rushed forwards.

"Turn in three, two, one, now!"

The _Endless Bounty_ swerved right at the last moment passing by the mines and leaving a whistling sound in Sáclair's ears. The proximity sensors showed the ship to have passed dangerously close to the mine. "Perfect," Sáclair muttered to himself before yelling, "Next turn ten seconds full burst down-thrust."

It was exhilarating to navigate through the field. Every last second brush with death had Sáclair's blood pounding in his ears and his body pumping adrenaline, heightening the already sensational feeling of swimming through the stars. God Emperor help him he loved every moment of it he wanted to just lose himself in the ship forever. He licked his lips and bit down on his tongue as he became more daring with every pass, waiting longer and longer between each turn, taunting death.

"Fantastic!" Sáclair cried out as they past the halfway mark, "Faster! Faster!"

"Sir?" His second in command Donat Enzo pursed his lips in frustration, "Is it wise to take such risks? Is there not danger enough for your needs already?"

"Ship thirty degrees more y access in ten seconds," Saclair shouted jovially then to Donat he whispered back, "We are safe enough old friend."

"One does not cheat death when it is not needed."

"My dearest Donat, if one does not cheat death on occasion one robs him of satisfaction when he finally comes for us. Who am I to rob him of a challenge?"

"I question if you are giving him a challenge or presenting him a gift. Yours is not the only life at stake."

"Bah, no sense of fun at all," Sáclair smirked, "Enjoy the ride."

Donat looked unconvinced but was too occupied with giving the distribution of work orders to the deck chief to respond with much more than a grunt. He would have to simply trust in Sáclair's judgment for the moment, which suited Sáclair just fine. There was still work to be done and fun to be had. It took some thirty minutes to pass through the minefield and another five for Sáclair to be convinced he was far enough from the mines to safely activate the void-shields of his ship.

"Tell the Inquisitor we're ten minutes from Showtime," Sáclair snapped his fingers to the servitor responsible for supplying him with wine, "And he'd better appreciate how... bloody..."

Sáclair blinked nonplussed, as a message appeared oh his HUD from an ID that he did not recognize, "What now?"

The chief astropath was flagging him down over the interlink. The chief astropath never flagged anyone down over the interlink, the chief astropath was rarely sane and coherent enough to remember his own name. The stress of the soul binding ritual and the constant psychic stresses of directing the astropathic choir of the ship usually kept him babbling meaningless strings of logic and data that would be subsequently interpreted by the sophisticated machines interpreting his brain patterns. It had been four generations since Head Astropath Dorae had even been able to recognize his own name. His message over the link was not his usual bizarre ramblings, "There is a missing section of space grid three epsilon on the port side."

"A what?"

"There is a missing section grid three epsilon on the port side."

"What is it?"

"There is a missing section grid three epsilon on the port side."

"….you aren't going to be more specific on this are you?"

"There is a missing section grid three epsilon on the port side."

"Mad as a hatter I swear," there was a section missing? That didn't make sense to Sáclair. The astropathic sensor-servitors of the _Endless Bounty_ were not military grade but they were sophisticated and unlikely to fail without outside interference. The Lionhearts themselves were guarding the servitors so it couldn't be an act of sabotage. So what could it be?

"Sir, would Kerrigan's alterations to the sensors to allow us to see through the Oita stealth measures prevent us from seeing through other measures?"

"No it shouldn't. Anyhow he's not supposed to…. supposed to have any ships. There aren't supposed to be any," Sáclair's eyes widened in horror as he screamed over the interlink to Sácomer, "Shields to full!"

"Sir is that wise, we're at the edge of..." Sácomer's words were cut short by the warning klaxons indicating a sudden impact of a bright green lancing bolt of energy shooting out of the "empty" section of space flying just missing the bounty by a few hundred yards to the stern, "What the blazes? There weren't supposed to be any ships here!"

Sáclair chuckled as the phantom pain of the impact on the ship shot up his spine, "We can ask them to leave politely if you think it would work."

Donat's dour voice came over the interlink, "It would seem that the absence of ships was a gross misrepresentation of facts.

"These heretics just have no sense of fair play," Sacomer whined.

"Luckily the Inquisitor has even less, try to keep us out of range of whatever the hell that thing is so we can make a pass on the outpost. I'm not risking atmospheric craft while that thing's there to shoot them out of the sky," Sácomer winced as a second shot flared on the ship's shields causing a dull throb from the ship interface's feedback, "Now get me my shields to full and a damned firing solution."

–

Kar'kan'tal could not remember where his own mind and memories ended and where the ship's began. He had been a beggar and a cripple when the master had found him. Or had that been the pilot before him. The master, the master was a good man. He a great man. He was the best man. He had promised Kar'kan'tal a new body and a new life as long as he obeyed him. He was pretty sure he had been a man.

Now he was the ship, a ship, wasn't he? It was hard to think, it hurt, it always hurt but it wouldn't hurt forever. It hadn't hurt in the before, in the before things had been better. They would be better. The master said they would be better. They had to get better.

The master was trapped on the ground where he could not go, there was no master. He needed a master. Without a master there was no one to sing him songs and tell him tales. And the pain, he could only remember the pain.

It had been months since they had gone down to the ground place on the master's ship and he hadn't heard from the master. Did the master want him to stay or to go down? He didn't want to do what the master didn't want him to do. The master would make the pain worse, but it wasn't the master's fault that he hurt Kar'kan'tal. Kar'kan'tal should listen to master, Kar'kan'tal had always listened to master. Didn't he?

Too many thoughts, too much pain. Why can't he remember? Time in silence, time alone, time without the master, there was too much time. And then there was a new thing on the horizon. It was a new thing a strange new thing thing. Not like what the master said should be coming. Not what the master promised, not the old times with the before masters who made the ships. No this was an enemy. Something that would try to stop the master, stop the before times, stop what needed to come, what had already come and what would never come to be. The stop, the time, and the winding pain were there. No, Kar'kan'tal was not going there.

Blood, yes he remembered blood. He liked blood, that's why the master picked him, that's why the master changed him, and that's why the master crippled him. Wait, what? No the master found him crippled the master was good and he was bad for questioning the master. All leaders must be questioned shouldn't they? Not the master.

Pain, pain, too much pain.

The ship, strange ship. Blood, he wanted blood, needed blood, needed to taste blood again and the ship needed it to. The ship worshipped different gods than he, or maybe they both worshipped no god.

Was there no God?… no it was not the absence of God that troubled him… God, there had been a god once a god on a throne of skulls and gold, he had loved and reviled him and a god on a throne of brass and love that he had hated. Now they were one, now they were gone.

The strange ship fired back? Pain, yes he felt pain. No matter. The ship would die.

And the blood would take away the pain.

Like the before time.

–

"Either shoot so you hit the damn the damn thing or don't bother shooting at all," Sáclair screamed over the coms to the gun batteries. This unnatural piece of xenotech filth dared to fire on his ship with impunity? He would not have it. It would die, honor demanded as much, " Andrews what in the hell is going on?"

Mister Andrews, a portly balding man who ran the ships sensor links to the main gun batters, appeared on a hololithic readout to Sáclair's left. The dull green glow of the display only emphasized the unnatural pallor of the void born gunnery sergeant hard wired into the ships mainframe. A piece of shrapnel from an exploding power relay had cut an angry gash into the man's face but his expression was more of rage than of pain, "We can't hit the damned thing with our targeting sensors. We're going to have to target the bastard manually."

"I don't care if you have to use the will of the Emperor alone. I want that abomination dead as quickly as is possible." The ship's sensors barked angrily as another lance of energy shot out from the inky black nothingness in the distance and the ship lurched left, "Damn it! I want more power to the shields, now! Donat make it so."

"Sir we can't put any more power into them than we're already doing. We had to refit the ancillary plasma generator as a dedicated power source for Kerrigan's..."

"To hell with the Inquisitor's pet project, we can put it back together once we're not dead!"

"I'll try sir," Donat responded professonally.

"No, you'll do Donat," the ship lurched again and Sáclair screamed as a feedback of pain shot up his spine, "Will somebody get a throne damned firing solution on that blasted ship"

The fuzzed voices of the fighter wings launched off the bounty shouted out random warnings and encouragements to each other other the com-net as they charged at the enemy ship, their little green blips indicating allies showing their great looping movements about the missing section of space where the enemy no doubt was hiding.

The _Endless Bounty_ was no stranger to battle even before its service to the Inquisitor, as a cargo ship specializing in exotic and often wholly illegal materials and cargo it was often the victim of attempted piracy. The hull of the ship had once been as ornate and opulent as the interior but centuries of blasting and laser-fire had left the sides of the ship pockmarked and twisted with scorch-marks and dents. Still with every bleeding rent of molten gold caused by the spidery black nothingness Sáclair found himself going mad from the indignity of it, he was not about to let some creature defeat his record of puissant mastery of space.

–

Strange thing, strange little thing. Angry little thing trying to hurt it like it was of the before times in the great wars. It was not from the before time, or the after, or was it? No matter it would try to kill but it would fail. The strange thing would die.

The strange thing ran, swooped around and fired at it. It was in pain from their weapons but it was a pain of the flesh, only a pain of the flesh. Their weapons were dangerous but it was a thing of the dark, a creature of hiding and strife. It would crush the creature.

Shields, all the young things now had shields. Foolish young things to rely on force and fire instead of guile and forbearance, the would learn in time. But they wouldn't would they? They would die like the rest.

Pain! More pain. The ship was hitting with greater accuracy, how? Feeling... what am I feeling? _I... was there an I..._ no the machine only the machine. Tendrils, tendrils grasping in the dark. Little bright minders, the before one's brother meddling at work. No, it would not work this time. The machine would feel their reach but the man way immune. The work of darker powers than the before ones. Tampering with the human gene making dark ones to silence the mind voices of the shining ones. They would find the ship, but not the void in which they met in silence. They could not listen.

But they could look, couldn't they? Yes there was more pain, more suffering. That would not do!

Damn it's safety, damn it's life, death was a blessing and master was a God-king to be!

–

"Of course actually shooting the blasted thing only managed to make the bastard mad. Just bloody fantastic," thought Saclair to himself as the bounty twisted to evade another angry bolt of light, "Andrews tell me you've got good news!"

"Sir," the sour face of Andrew's responded over the interlink as he tried to ignore a servo skull attempting to cauterize and bandage his nasty looking head-wound, "We've started manually linking in some sanctioned psychers into the control interface but it was never meant for this sort of implantation into someone without years of preparatory chemical conditioning. As it stands now I think we can manage to use them for about ten more minutes before their bodies are no longer able to hand the stress and they expire."

"Then you'd best make those ten minutes count then shan't you?"

"By your command sir."

The ship rocked again, "Donat, the damned shields! What about my throne damned shields! We're going to be down to only the hull soon if I can't get them more power."

"Sir Kerrigan cannot re-integrate the ancillary plasma generator without disabling the primary systems. There is nothing she can safely do till we're out of battle."

"What can she unsafely bloody well do."

"She can do little more than redirect life support energy."

"Pull it from the deeps, the only people living that close to the plasma reactors are servitors, criminals, and the insane. We can afford to lose them we can't afford to lose the ship."

"And Magos Kerrigan herself."

"Donat, a lack of air is hardly an issue to bother a bloody Magos."

"Her attendants might object to it quite strongly sir."

"Her attendants will have to simply tough it out with their survival air tanks. They were intended for rad-bursts so they only cover a thirty minute period but if this blasted thing gets its way that won't be an issue."

"Sir," it was the voice of Andrews over the

"What is it now Mr. Andrews?"

"The lances aren't having much of an effect but the broadside guns are doing some damage to it when they can hit it," Andrews bit his lip pensively, "There's something odd about this thing Sir."

"About the spectral apparition of a ship blasting the hell out of my port side shields? Whatever could you mean," he rounded angrily to a maintenance crew of tech adepts trying to repair a shattered mural attached to the bulkhead, "Get the damned shields working first you twits, I don't give a tinkers damn what they're doing the bloody décor."

He turned back to Sgt. Andrews with a look of barely controlled rage, "What exactly is _odd_ about this ship."

"Well the fighter wings are reporting that damn thing is bleeding when we shoot it."

"Bleeding?"

"Like a stuck grox."

"It's organic... the damned thing is organic... if it bleeds..." Sáclair looked to the readouts displaying failing shields and systems and entered a new heading, "If it bleeds we can kill it. Order the fighter wings to move out of our path."

Sácomer's corpulence wobbled nervously, "Sir?"

"I'm turning the damn ship around. We're going to ram the bastard."

–

It wasn't dying. Odd, most things died quicker than this. It would only be a matter of time, Kar'kan'tal felt sad for the ship in a way. The dead god would not approve but he was a servant of a glorious past not a long failed future.

Stranger still it was coming towards it. The ship was confused but Kar'kan'tal was afraid... why was he afraid? The ship knew that the logical tactical decision was to surrender or retreat. Defeat was obvious. Kar'kan'tal remembered something different, something strange, something human.

It was not going to reatreat.

The ship reacted in horror. Such a decision was insane, it had no hope of succeeding, Kar'kan'tal must be mistaken. Kar'kan'tal must be mistaken... by the old ones Kar'kan'tal was not mistaken! The ship tried to leave, tried to pull itself away but it was too late. Its confusion and indecision had sealed its fate. The strong armored prow of the _Endless Bounty _was not strong enough to destroy the ship in a head on collision but it's forward gun batteries were hard pressed to miss the ship from point blank range.

Kar'kan'tal's last thought as he felt the ship being torn into so much ichor and viscera was and odd one.

If the ship was Kar'kan'tal then who was he?

–

Sáclair spat up bloody phlegm as the ship came to a halt just beyond the crushed ship remnants. Killing that blasted ship wouldn't be the act that earned him his place with the fathers but Emperor willing it wasn't far off from it. Sáclair yanked the connection out of his arm wincing it's presence went away.

"When this is all over remind me to call the blasted Inquisitor and tell him about re-defining what he considers "need to know" information about a job. And that by the Saints as my witness the cost of repairing my ship is coming out of his Inquisitorial expense account."

"Of course sir."

"Fire the damn breaching torpedoes at the central dome."

–

Cairn warbled with frustration as he tried to buckle into the crash webbing on the retrofitted boarding torpedo. The seats were properly sized for a man of Damascan origins wearing combat grear but ill fitted for someone of the Skitarii's unusual size and girth.

"Cairn we drop in ten minutes we haven't the time for you to be mucking about. Now if the bloody Dorn unit can fit into one of these things than you damn well can," it was a half-truth at best. The Dorn unit had been painstakingly strapped into place under Daul's supervision by a couple of tech adepts. Daul hated lying to Cairn but implying that the non-sentient servitor had manged to accomplish a task the Skitarii had not was galling enough to silence the binary whinge.

Daul didn't really have the heart to blame Cairn for being frustrated but he couldn't afford to look weak in front of the Lionheart assault teams. To them he must be a paragon of leadership and excellence. The Lionhearts, the highly trained and fiercely loyal personal army of Nathaniel Sáclair, were as full of bluster and bravado as Sáclair himself. Like Sáclair they backed up that bravado with a dangerous edge and martial acumen keen as a Kasarkin blade. Unlike the rank and file security forces of the bounty the Lionhearts were usually trained by sending them into active warzones to hone their skills, it wasn't unheard of for an unruly soldier from one of the more strict regiments like the Mordians or the Kriegsmen to "accidentally" end up coming back with the Lionhearts as a partisan soldier bearing he heraldry of Sáclair.

It also meant that Daul had been forced to seem as humorless and unimpressed by the battle between the _Endless Bounty_ and the xenos ship. Maintaining a look of grim frustration was easier today than most days. Ignoring the near brush with death against the enemy ship the boarding torpedoes of the bounty had never been intended to be used as part of an atmospheric entry. Belzafest's atmospere was negligible but of the ten torpedoes it was likely that three would not make it to the surface. It was suicide but there was no better way of avoiding being tracked by the anti-aircraft weaponry of the colony. The pods would ostensibly drop faster than anything bigger than a lesser flak gun could track and the chances of that shooting down one of the boarding torpedoes.

The bulky suit of artificer made powered armor helped to both intimidate and conceal Daul's own severe fear of flying. The leering skull mask of his helmet did a fantastic job of hiding Daul's ardent desire to be _anywhere_ but dropping out of space in an adamatium tube. Better still the mag-locks in his boots would allow him to stand upright in the center of the pod in lieu of strapping himself down as though even gravity itself couldn't intimidate him.

Throne but he hated heights.

The thunderous bang of the initial launch yanked at Daul inside his armor as his body was thrust between the artificial gravity of the ship and the weightlessness of space. If the Lionhearts found the transition between to be as sickening as Daul did they showed no signs of discomfort. Daul briefly wondered if they too had taken supliments to help with grav sickness but it seemed more likely that the veteran spacers had simply become used to rapidly changing gravity. Cairn, who lacked a digestive tract was of course blissfully unaware of the shift.

Daul turned his head to the palefaced man in the corner of the tube humming to himself and caressing his gun lovingly. Colonel Danzig, leader of the Lionhearts, smiled back at Daul, "You take me to the best parties Sir."

"Parties Colonel?"

"You get us all dressed up to socialize with heretics in traditional Imperial fashion. Why you even brought me a friend to play with," he patted the high powered Cadian made lasgun on his lap, "It's her first time but I bet she can sing like an angel when she puts her mind to it. We're in for a fun night sir."

Daul said nothing. Responding would only fuel the rant and he knew this was the way that Lionhearts let off steam before a battle. The colonel continued, oblivious to Daul's silence, "I just want you to know that a night out on the town might won't be enough to get me to put out on a first date."

Danzig pursed his lips mockingly, "I'm not that kind of girl."

"Indeed you aren't," replied his second in command Sergei, "but that is out of a lack of options rather than a lack of desire. The mind is willing, but the flesh is pale and flabby."

And so it continued, each man in the squad tossing insults at their superior officer till the line got to he lowest ranking man who simply insulted himself. It was a ritual with a simple purpose, the Lionhearts believed that a man with a grudge had unfinished business and could thus not allow himself to die until he had properly resolved the matter of honor. Every insult bound them all together by their own chain of grudges forcing each man to survive and make sure the man above him survived so that they could resolve all grudges one day.

The Lionhearts were not ones for silent contemplation before entering the fray. The squad sang cadences as the torpedo plummeted to earth. The private language of the Lionhearts was an ancient pagan tongue from before the coming of the Emperor from the old Damascan holy books. It prevented their enemies from breaking their communications and protected their ancient cultural heritage. Daul hadn't learned their language yet but their cadences were simple enough to follow and had a common refrain. Based upon the thrusting motions that the Colonel made every once and a while it seemed best to simply appreciate the beauty of the song without putting too much thought into the content. The Lionhearts may be elegant and cultured soldiers but they were still soldiers.

The heat and friction of re-entry shaking the torpedo wildly only made the soldiers sing their cadence louder and prouder. The squealing angry sound of the inertial dampener slowly failing was deafening but they paid it no heed because the song was not finished. Daul found less comfort in the uproarious chanting about whatever Danzig had been pantomime thrusting towards in light of the plummeting torpedo. His heart was in this throat and threatening to flee out his lips were he to open them.

"Imperitor Deux Est..." The imperial mantra and prayer of forgiveness and guidance was long and complicated but focusing on the words would help clear his mind. He chucked to himself as he saw Cairn, the only man who hated heights more than Daul himself. The towering mechanical man had long since given up on the buckles and simply snaked his mechandrites through the ship's crash webbing and grabbed onto the bulkhead with his heavy duty augmentic arms. Cairn scowled at Daul and sputtered something curt and no doubt rude in binary, the fine tentacle like mechandries twisting nervously.

The tube tube jerked loudly and abruptly, a metallic bang resounding through the torpedo. Danzig turned to Daul, the cadence now silent, "Sir, exactly how long have they had to prepare?"

Daul shifted his neck, frustratedly cracking his vertebre, "Long enough to improve the anti-aircraft weaponry it would seem."

Danzig smile manically, "Good Sir, wouldn't be any fun if it were easy."

Daul disagreed wholeheartedly, facing an enemy who was as entrenched as the gates of Cadia was hardly practical but it was a waste of time to say so, "It would seem that Faust seems bound and determined to give you the challenge you seek."

Danzig smiled and turned to his men yelling out, "You hear that boys, we're in for a real scrap. No more fighting off candy arsed pirates for us." He punctuated it with a loud whooping cheer that his men responded in kind.

The tube bucked and bobbed as the anti-aircraft fire tried to track them. It seemed that they would get clear of the danger at first but the bangs and pops rapidly became deafening. Eventually someone got luck and blasted a wide hole in the side of thetorpedo bursting the left wall and two unlucky Lionhearts into shrapnel and smoking charnel. The bright orange smoke of the toxic Belzafest atmosphere began to seep into the tube in thick bilious clouds.

Someone screamed "Rebreathers!" and the Lionhearts rushed to put on the masks before inhaling too much of the natural paralytic caused them to asphyxiate. The man on Carin's left struggled with the straps on his mask as the methane rich air caused his mind to cloud and his eyes to fog up with tears. A slender but agile mechandrite shot out and grabbed the mask, pulling it over the man's head and clipping the air hose firmly into place. The Lionheart ceased to flail in pain, gasping in bliss. He wispered out words of thanks that Cairn seemed politely unaware of in light of the rapidly approaching ground. Cairn often seemed to be unaware of what his mechandrites did on his behalf. Daul braced himself with the crash webbing on the ceiling, even with the mag locked boots and powered armor this was going to hurt if things went further wrong. This was going to hurt a great deal.

The torpedo collided with the ground tail end first, crumpling under its own massive weight and pulping three Lionhearts and a servitor that had been hard wired into the guidance systems. The Lionhearts, bruised and battered though they were remained silent and ready, waiting for the end. The tube creaked and tipped over flipping the passengers upside down. A man screamed as his saftey harness failed and he was tossed headfirst into the bulkhead, his neck twisting at an odd angle, his eyes twirling in agony. A well placed shot from Danzig saved the proud Lionheart from a life of paralysis and indignity.

The process of safely untangling themselves from the combat webbing and harnesses was an indelicate one, slowed only by a healthy desire not to end up as the first man had. Daul's own extraction had proven to be the most undignified of the lot, once his mag locked boots let loose his body fell to the ground with a resounding clang as his even ton of mass collided with the ground. Cairn's descent proved to be somewhat more graceful. He descended with his spidery mechandrites twitching shoulders indicating his mirth at Daul's predicament.

"Just help me off the damn ground."

One of the Lionhearts nearest to the door called out, "Colonel Danzig, sir. The breaching doors seem to be damaged, shall we burn through?"

Danzig nodded, "Haziz, Falkan, Bornat to the front to the front with the meltas."

"Sir," yelled a voice from the back, "Haziz is dead sir, him and the damned melta, Falkan and Bornat too. We had them in the back because we thought the anti-aircaft was most likely to hit us head on."

Danzig swore loudly, "What the hell are we supposed to get through that slagging door without a bloody meltagun, we pop detchord, grenades or meltabombs in here and we'll be as fragged as the damn door."

Daul cleared his throat, the sound reverberating metallically through his vox unit and lifted an oversized gauntlet, "I believe I may be of assistance."

Danzig nodded and bowed out of the way. The servo assisted power-fists of the Adeptus Astrates were designed with the intention of tearing through armored bulkheads and vehicles. His mentor and felt that it was necessary to use such weapons of terror in the apprehension of heretics. The perceived omnipotence of being able to rip through solid ferrocrete was often an effective intelligence-gathering supplement. As his left hand grasped at the door the powerful disruptive energies of the gauntlet flared blue and screeched angrily. As his fingers grabbed, twisted, pushed, pulled, ripped and tore at the door the dancing blue arks of electricity bursting off the agitated subatomic matter flared blindingly bright.

"I am the sword of the Emperor," Daul yelled, "I am his strength and his sigil, by my hand the evils of this galaxy shall be smote and I am not about to be stopped in my righteous quest by a broken blasted hatch!"

Daul roared and ripped the adamantium door off its hinges with a resounding clang. The Lionhearts rushed out before it had even hit the ground and dove for cover, ready to fight for their lives. The ridge they landed on, however, was quite abandoned. According to Daul's autosensors had gone some five miles off course from the expected landing zone and would have to catch up with the other three torpedoes worth of troops.

"Danzig we need to move south as soon as possible. We won't be there in time be with the main assault force but if we are to catch Faust we'll need to reach the southern dome within the hour."

"Yes sir," Danzig's voice squawked out, garbled by the microphone in his breathing mask.

Daul and Cairn let the way, towering figures of adamantium making the Lionhearts look squat and pinched by comparison. The bright orange toxins of the fog billowed and shimmered as they waded though it. The path was slow and treacherous, deep gorges and sharp rocks lay hidden in the smog waiting to snag the unwary. Belzafest may have been beautiful once, the petrified fauna hinted at a past of lush forests and green grass, but the modern Belzafest was sullen and stretched. The dark sod of the earth beneath their feet had long since given up on life and simply slid into death.

It was a terrible dead place, silent except for their own footfalls and the distant booms and cracks of battle at the domed structures of the colony. The group only stopped twice to remove Dorn from where he had gotten himself stuck in the ground when Daul had forgotten to give him the necessary command to avoid a sudden drop or ravine.

Every few minutes or so one of the Lionhearts would swear loudly as they caught their foot on a jutting shart of razor sharp sharp rock or thick knot of petrified root hidden beneath the orange smog. Bright green geysers of molten hot smoke shot up from waist high geysers along the path, randomly bathing them in sickly light and reflecting against the gold leaf trim of the Lionhearts flak armor.

It was some twenty minutes of treacherous ground and hidden paths before they reached anything resembling civilization, the remnants of what was once the main street of some alien city. Towering spires of crystal cut out of the very mountains themselves glinted in the dull light, their dark windows ominously presenting convenient cover should Faust have placed snipers. Danzig whistled and tapped the side of his head and lifted two fingers. Daul's radio was apparently tuned onto the wrong frequency.

"Yes Colonel?"

"Sir? Is there something I'm missing? Our mission report said that there was only one settled part of the planet. This," Danzig waved to the wide street, "Is a bit more developed than advertised and clearly not human."

"It also hasn't been habitable for close to ten thousand years. We aren't really sure who made the cities, it's why the Belzafest colony is here in the first place," Daul squinted and pointed at something far down the street visible only to his own enhanced senses, "The main dome is at the end of this street built over the main excavation site, we're going to need to work our way there. Now is hardly the time for a history lesson."

Danzig raised his hand and signed at this men, the Lionhearts rushed forwards, "I think you'll find that we have time for both or neither. Something stripped this world bare and I find that highly unnerving."

"Your hardly alone on that," yelled out the voice of his Sergei, "The whole bloody place just screams trap."

Daul sighed, "Possibly but we're going to have to take that risk. Come on."

It was unsurprising that Danzig should feel the need for a better explanation for the disturbingly well preserved empty cities of Belzafest. The supposedly extinct indigenous peoples of Belzafest were a common topic of myth and speculation in Xenologer and Xenobiologer circles. No physical remains of the natives of Belzafest had ever been recovered though plenty of non-functioning technology had. Belzafest, or "Xenos-prime" was in the center of some half dozen planets with similar crystalline architecture and total ecological holocaust. Every planet had been wholly scourged of life and history either by some unknown enemy of days past or by the aboriginal Belzafast xenoforms.

The only universally agreed upon facts were that there had once been some form of bipedal xenos living in Belzafest and its surrounding systems. Had Faust come purely to unravel the secrets of Belzafest or for some darker purpose? Daul did not know but he could not allow for Faust's goals to succeed, no matter the cost. Fausts involvement with this world was enough to convince Daul of the danger of the planet. He was a twisted madman by all accounts, the sort of monster who would use a mass grave like Belzafest as a fortress.

Faust would die by his hand, it was the only acceptable outcome.

The sky continued to flash in bursts, anti-aircraft batteries struggling to fight off the air wings of the bounty. Daul smiled wryly, Sáclair was committing more military resources to this assault than he had initially promised. The boxy shapes of the heavier marauder bombers and their thunderbolt escort fighters danced and weaved around the smaller wedge shaped fighters of the Belzafest colony spitting out iridescent green bolts of death from their lascannons. In the distance the bright bursts of cyclonic explosives flashed off the dull purplish glow of the void shield protecting the domed settlement.

"Where the hell did Faust get series six Soral Interceptors?" mused Sergi, "No PDF has those freaking things. Hell _we_ don't even have those freaking things."

"Faust's efforts are well financed. He has a great deal of support from groups like the Amon Sui and centuries of personal wealth amassed to support himself," Daul fidgeted with the thick chain that held a large tome in place at his side.

"Why the hell don't we have weapons like them backing us up? Or the freaking Space Marines? Isn't this chap some sort of major heretic?"

Daul sighed. His own resources were considerably more limited as of late, the planet his own personal estates and holdings were based on had been destroyed utterly by the Imperial Navy in order to deny a splinter fleet of Hive Cancer the biomass necessary to advance into the Empire. He had been offworld to deal with the Amon Sui when news reached him of the Exterminatus of Verzan. Now his network consisted of Cairn and what few possessions he had with him on the _Endless Bounty_, "The Adeptus Astrates aid when they chose to and whom they chose to. I have not endeared myself with the local chapters and I doubt I could gain their assistance in time, though I have sent a plea for aid."

The group slowed as they approached the central dome and the signs and sounds of fighting became more prominent. The Lionhearts fanned out hugging what little cover they could find, eyes straining to see though the fog. Daul's own senses, augmented by his own augmentic and psychic enhancements were less dulled. It was he who noticed the first sign of enemy movement.

Daul grabbed Galan, one of the youngest Lionhearts by the sleeve and yanked the boy behind him as a waning klaxon began to blare from his helmet's HUD. He barely had time to yell, "incoming" before the whistling death of mortar shells impacted into the rocky ground of the street flinging razor sharp shrapnel and debris in a wide arc. Several of the Lionhearts were tossed by the blast and landed flat on the ground some five feet from where they had been standing. Someone outside Daul's field of vison screamed a wet cry as a shard of crystal lodged itself into the thin mylar of the breathing tube and into the soft flesh of their throat.

"Damnit Dorn get out of the middle of the blasted street!" The servitor was standing in the middle of the street, blissfully unaware of the danger around him and grinning stupidly. A long gash was bleeding steadily where he had been clipped by shrapnel. At his master's command the servitor ran towards Daul at a brisk trot, uncaring of the whistling sounds of an imminent second shelling.

The now two dozen men sat unmoving, bellies to the ground in cover. Not daring to speak or even breath for fear of missing the sound of incoming shells.

Minutes passed like hours.

"Where the hell are they?" Danzig yelled over the com-net after a while, "Who has the damned auspex? I want to know who the bloody hell is shooting at me and I want to shoot them in the bloody bonce."

"Genrin and Tayvlin were sir."

"Thone take me, is anyone who_ isn't _dead carrying the damned gear?"

"Mine was taken out by the shelling sir," responded a nervous Falon.

Danzig flexed his hand and resisted he seemed to struggle with the urge to throttle the nearest person till Cairn chirped an affirmative response while fiddling with some boxy piece of admech technology at his side.

"Of course the damned mute has the auspex... why not..."

"The _damned mute_," responded Daul tersely as Cairn fed data directly into his helmet's infolink, "Is more than adequately communicating with the rest of us. They aren't shelling us, apparently the Belzafest PDF forces that have been in hiding since Faust took over the colony have decided to assist us. There is an armored column assaulting a bunker some half mile southwest of us, those were presumably stray shots."

"I don't like my men being dead as a result of collateral damage Inquisitor."

"I don't like your men being dead at all," Daul squinted into the distance, "It would be best for us to avoid the PDF's armored division, they are as likely to shoot us as Faust's forces in this damned smog."

"Where to then?"

"We need to get closer to the domes, there ought to be underground entrances to the excavation sites. We just need to find one and follow it back to the main dome."

"Sir that just screams trap to me."

"I prefer a trap to mortar rounds. They're damned inconvenient."

Danzig paused before responding in a deathly serious voice, "Sir did you just make a joke about our imminent deaths?"

"It's possible."

Danzig laughed heartily, "There's hope for you yet. Men move out, we've got a hole to find."

–

Kerrigan sat in the center of the great machine chanting the rites of purification and computation for the fifth time, inhaling the scent of the perfumed lubricating oils that her adepts were gently massaging into the delicate gears and servos along the wall. The machine was as ancient as the _Endless Bounty_ itself and it's machine spirit was fragmented and confused after centuries of disuse. Such a flagrant abuse of one of the children of the Omassiah was unacceptable but symptomatic of the loss of knowledge following the Age of Strife and the Age of Apostasy. Even a magos of Kerrigan's quality could only hope to fix and mend the machine, the creation of such wondrous technology was beyond her ken.

The tactile sensors in her augmentic limbs allowed her to feel the ridges and bumps in the dark obsidian aquilla placed in the middle of the floor as she prostrated herself in front of the icon of the great cog. With love and care she repeated the sacred rite of cogitation, slowly lowering her slim computer interface mechandrite into the port in the eye of the left head of the eagle. The machine was near mad, it had gone too long without a user and had gone quite rampant.

She sang it soothing words as she helped it to reach solutions to it's rampant loops of incomplete logic and inane trails of computations. The machine would be ready for when Daul needed it. It was her duty, it was her honor, and it was her pleasure to contribute to the death of Soren Faust.

She would not fail.

Such an out come would be illogical.

–

Sorry for the long gap between chapters and the suddent rush of them. I wanted to make the first elements of B5 fit within the warhammer 40k setting properly. The next chapter will be done by next saturday.


	4. Chapter 4

Discovering an entrance to the underground dig sites proved to be astoundingly easy, even in the dim murk of Belzafest's fog. As a place of great academic interest the leadership of the colony had seen fit to put every possible safety measure in place to make sure that those mining and exploring the surface of the colony could find their way back to safety. The excavation sites were marked with oversized spotlights and bright glow-globes that flashed on the ground for a good hundred meters in a great semi-circle. The entrance was guarded by a handful of pitifully thin looking men wearing rebreathers and holding low caliber stubbers. They stood in a close huddle near to the warmth of an exhaust vent, guns lazily held at their sides.

They were dead before they ever knew it. Five whip cracks of laser-fire sounded and five bodies fell bonelessly to the ground, their eyes glassing over. Sabestan, one of the Lionheart scouts ran forwards though the thick orange smoke and ducked down next to the bodes one by one before clicking his radio twice to indicate that it was safe to advance.

"Hardly quality mercenaries he's been hiring," Danzig said as they warily approached the entrance to the catacombs, "They didn't even get off a shot."

Daul kneeled next to one of the corpses and pulled off its rebreather, "They aren't mercenaries, I think they're leftovers from the crew of the ship Faust was commanding when he arrived. Look here, the muscles in his arm are strong but the bones are brittle from years in a zero gravity environment. They shattered from the impact of the shot where on a normal man they would just be seared and burnt."

"Throne," Sergei kneeled next to Daul, "He's right. I'll way even money he worked as zero-g welder or the like. I thought the colonists destroyed the ship."

"The engines at any rate, it would seem that some of the ships crew survived the bisection of the ship," Daul clicked his tongue pensively, "He's using them as advance guard to figure out where we're coming from. Probably doing vox checks at regular intervals. They aren't here to stop us, just to slow us down and to track our progress. He didn't even bother to give them weapons capable of piercing rudimentary body armor."

Cairn warbled and frustratedly waved a chronometer.

"Quite right, the more time we dawdle the more time we give Faust to form a counteroffensive," Daul said straightening up and turning to the sealed entrance to the catacombs, "Danzig if you would be so kind as to open a path?"

"My pleasure sir," Danzig pulled a long silvery tube out of his bag, fixed it to the side of the door, pressed a red button on the top, then backed to a safe distance. The tube burst in an implosion of controlled heat and fission, leaving a molten pile of slag where once stood a door. Danzig smiled, yelled "For the Emperor!" and led the charge through the new opening in the wall.

The excavation site consisted of a series of subterranean passages carved out of the same silvery crystal as the buildings above ground with many thousands of cross passages. Like the rest of the city it was disturbingly untouched by time and wear but unlike the long since plundered above ground. It was alarmingly well preserved, one would expect an area undergoing such frankly rapid excavations to be a mess of instrumentation and clutter but the tunnels hardly even showed noticeable levels of dust or grime. The passing of centuries had passed apparently without notice helped in part, Daul suspected, by some as of yet undiscovered automated maintenance systems.

The group stopped briefly as the roof shook and debris rained on their heads. Danzig looked up, " Short range shells?"

"Not ours," Sergei tapped the rail of the mag train, "Do we have a cart we could use to ride this?"

"And do what exactly? Be all in one place for them to shoot us in a single shot?"

"I wouldn't mind getting Sontián off this leg," Gazan the medicus of the first squad was wrapping second squad's sniper's leg with a combat dressing, "He's good to walk once the second skin sets but abrupt movement could rupture the seal."

"I can see that Medicus."

"And Fabian must have some sort of abnormality in his brain chemistry, he's clearly reacting badly to the morphine," the aforementioned Fabian was standing groggily to the side blinking incessantly and muttering about a "holy duty."

"I can't afford to wait any more than I already have Gazan," Daul said as he hefted the sniper over his shoulder in spite of the burly man's protestations of perfect health and started marching along the path of the tracks, "We need to move quickly or not at all."

"The man is trapped in a hole on a godforsaken rock for Throne's sake. How much of a time limit could be possibly be operating on?"

"I ordered to total _Exterminatus Extremus_ of this planet in twenty hours by the fifth fleet. It would be unwise to be on the planet when it happens."

"... that would do it," Danzig grimaced, "Any particular reason you felt the need to add an additional challenge to this?"

"It would be advantageous to catch him alive but far more still to allow him to live and escape. If he is the real Faust he has incalculable tactical information about the Halo Stars and if not we must determine where he encountered the secret knowledge of the arch-heretic," Daul paused, "And frankly if we haven't captured him alive in twenty four hours I can't risk the chance that he might succeed at whatever his goals may be."

The ceiling shook again briefly making Daul's knees feel weak and once again making him grateful that his helmet obscured any expression of surprise or worry, "We can argue about the merits and failings of my decision once we are closer to the central dome. Those shells are getting closer and I'm not sure how stable these tunnels are. We'll follow the mag rail, for now at least, as it must head to a central hub somewhere. It's guarded, no doubt, but I suspect that Faust will have deployed his stronger forces inside the dome itself around the civilian population."

"Not at the points of ingress?"

"His worry will be more about egress."

"Where the hell would they go?"

"I doubt the civilians care, the past records of Faust's experiments would tend to indicate that he prefers to have a wide range of genetic templates upon which to conduct experiments. Suffice it to say most of his patients are not willing participants. I suspect that the poison gases of the surface world look pleasant by comparison."

"I doubt you're speaking metaphorically are you?"

"If this is actually Inquisitor Faust as bad as you can imagine. He was tutored in the flesh-works by the homunculus Coven of the Sightless Eye. If we fail and you're captured I suggest slicing your own wrists, his doctors probably won't be able to stop the death processes and cyanide isn't fast acting enough."

"Exactly how many people has this Inquisitor killed," Danzig looked over his shoulder at Cairn as the Skitarii fiddled with a machine on the wall bearing the great cog of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The Skitarii tilted his head to the side with a serious air and a face inscrutable, mechanical tentacles still adjusting and fidgeting. Cairn's memory engrams included very specific eyes-only data on Faust's attacks on the Ad-Mech itself including the destruction of several entire forge worlds. The Machine God's servants had long memories and many well deserved grudges.

"Enough to cause us...no, _no!_ Dorn stand still," the Arco-flagellant flailed impotently about in a low hanging chandelier made up of find strands of glowing crystal. The snaking crystalline strands had wrapped around the power leads to whiplike chords replacing his hands and were sparking ominously, each spark causing red welts to appear on the otherwise pallid and oily skin of Dorn. Daul sliced the offending cords with one of the razor tipped talons of his gauntlet muttering darkly under his breath, "Insufferable creature, they could at least have left some of your basic reasoning skills. A danger to yourself and others I swear."

Dorn stared back at with a gormless expression, drooling slightly and apparently only mildly interested in his brief incarceration and subsequent liberation. Even then Daul was reasonably sure the only reason Dorn even looked back at him was a pavlovian reaction to having his owner speak. It was uncommonly stupid, even for a servitor. It was quite likely that an overzealous surgeon lobotomized more of Dorn's brain than was really necessary. He was eternally stumbling into near lethal situations.

"Damned, useless servitor," Danzig looked at it scornfully, "Why you brought it is beyond me. More trouble than it's worth."

"You'll keep your opinions to yourself soldier," resisting the urge to openly agree with Danzig was difficult but it wouldn't do to have the Lionhearts openly mocking a servant of His most holy Inquisition. A fine dust of crystal shook from the roof as another shell hit the roof, shaking the group soundly and causing Sontián to wince with pain from his awkward position draped over the Inquisitor's shoulder. It was time to move out.

The group moved as silently as they could down the main corridor, sticking close to the tracks of the mag-tram. Daul's armor had been designed specifically with stealth in mind. The thick treads of his armored greaves were created with stealth in mind, soft but durable plastisteel soles muffled his footfalls considerably. Even so he could not help but feel somewhat awkward and plodding as the Lionhearts gracefully slunk forwards in the semi-dark hugging the shadows. Their footfalls hardly even caressed the ground. Every once and a while Cairn would motion for the group to stop at one alcove or another as he consulted with one of the many data terminals the Admech had left along the walls, hoping to find some map or legend by which they might navigate the excavation site with greater ease. The colonists had apparently instructed the machine spirit to secret that information away in the hopes that it might give their PDF a chance to regroup and arrange a counteroffensive but Cairn seemed to suspect that the lesser machine minds of the outer terminals might have escaped the notice of the dome's primary machine spirit. The arcane data spirits of the Machine God were prone to such fickle errors.

As they sunk deeper into the dark tunnels it became readily apparent that Cairn was not the only one to have come to that conclusion. The ground was littered with the irregular clawed footprints of something clearly inhuman traveling in a large group, no doubt the abhuman half-breed soldiers of Faust. Easily as large as the abhuman ogryns and possessed of a deceptively cunning whit the half-breeds of Faust were the things of nightmares. Twisted masses of cruel flesh and crueler spirit, pale shadows of the men they once were. They too were looking for the peripheral logic engines and data ports that littered the walls of the tunnels.

"On the bright side they don't seem to be finding what they're looking for," Belka one of the burliest of the Lionhearts mused as he shifted the debris of a smashed vid-screen with his boot.

Daul grunted noncommittally as Cairn approached the data port, "It's possible. They certainly might have smashed it in a rage."

Sergei shot Daul a pensive look, "_Might_ have Sir?"

Danzig pulled a cigar out of his pocket and looked mournfully at the pilot light on Hamman's flamer, before thinking better of it and pocketing it, "Inquisitor if you are going to insist upon being cryptic we're going to be dead and buried sooner rather than later. I hope you'll pardon my bluntness but I while I'm comfortable dying for our cause I'd much prefer to help the other fellah die for his."

Daul permitted himself a brief chuckle, "It may well be that they're simply sabotaging everything that isn't directly of use to themselves. The destruction is too concise and too clean for me to believe that it was being caused by a rampaging half-man. They went straight for the computers and ignored everything else in the room. They clearly used their rifles rather than their fists, the footprints don't go directly up to the keyboard, and a half-breed in a fury cannot resist the urge for the close kill."

"Then the data is probably useless?" Sontián asked as Daul placed him back on the ground.

"Haven't the foggiest. Data collection and collaboration isn't my forte and my specialist isn't particularly talkative," Cairn squawked out a rude string of binary, "And frankly I doubt that Faust would risk giving his half-breeds such dangerous knowledge, he values his own cleverness too much."

"Seems to be a theme with Inquisitors," Danzig muttered in an exaggerated whisper.

"If you'd prefer I imitate the Commissariat I could always just shoot you for insubordination."

Danzig shrugged and looked at Sergei, "I believe he just implied he was going to give me a heretics furlough on the bolt magnet express."

"Don't look to me Sir, you die and I get an instant promotion. And frankly your quarters are substantially larger than mine are."

"And my girl is substantially prettier than yours."

Daul rolled his eyes and focused on the waving mechandrites of Cairn as the Lionhearts broke into another one of their insult competitions. It was about midway through a complex suggestion of an anatomically improbable act involving a goat and Lance Corporal Beau'nal's paternal grandmother that Cairn blurted out a chime of success. After some fiddling with a silvery box at his side engraved with the great cog Cairn nodded to Daul.

"Finally," Sergei smiled, "If we didn't get to killing xenos soon I was afraid I'd forget how."

"We should hurry," Daul said as he checked his chronometer, "Sácomer starts phase two soon."

–

"Could you repeat that last order sir? I seem to have misheard you," Asked a disbelieving Sácomer. The resentment between the Inquisitor and the Captain was the most poorly kept secret on the _Endless Bounty_ but such feuds were resolved with secrecy and guile in the upper class, not force and brutality. To simply have the _Endless Bounty_ bombard the location of the Inquisitor's locator beacon was unthinkable.

Sáclair glowered back at Sácomer, he had never been one for repeating himself, "I need you to fire on the colony on my order. Load the starboard guns with high yield ammunition and warn our birds to stay out of the way. We'll the locator beacon for the Inquisitor and the Lionhearts to get past the jamming signals they're using."

"Sir," Sacomer's many chins shook with confusion.

"You heard me order's Mr. Sácomer, either follow them or relieve yourself of duty," Sánclair looked positively giddy as he sipped at his wine. As the seconds of stunned disbelief and quivering chins passed, the look of betrayed disbelief on the Master of the Watch's face sobered him somewhat, "Calm yourself Sácomer, this is not a betrayal of either your honor or my own we are doing this under direct Inquisitorial orders of Daul himself."

"Why would he order you to do that? Why would anyone ask for that?"

"I doubt that it was a roundabout suicide pact," Donat, dour faced as ever, chucked dryly, "He has a plan, damned if I can see what it is. The Inquisitor isn't planning to die now."

"No," Sáclair's disappointment filling every word, "I doubt he will. Still, we might get lucky. Mr. Sácomer would you be so kind as to take my ship into range."

"Yes sir, moving to optimal firing range."

Sánclair reclined in his throne and sipped at his glass, eyeing the massive hologram in front of him. The green shape of the _Endless Bounty_ shifted slowly above the bright orange sphere of Belzafest. Sánclair's blood boiled and his heart raced, this was the sort of conflict he adored, the adventure he craved. His passive links to the ship hummed with the energies of weapons systems and subsystems activating and calculating and his ears were filled with the sounds of battle chatter over the Vox net. The anticipation for the first salvo on the colony was intolerable.

"He does bring me the most delicious violence," Sánclair whispered in a voice of meaningful omission as he watched his chronometer count down the minutes.

–

The seemingly random offshoots of the paths transpired to be part of a greater series of Fibonacci spirals leading to the central plaza of ancient Belzafast. It was in the ruins of this plaza that the colony itself sat, a ten kilometers wide domed city half as tall skyward as it was underground. Now that they had a map finding the core city proved to be astoundingly simple, getting into it proved to be substantially more difficult. As they approached one of the various transport tubes to the city proper the sounds of deep breathing and mewling cries were audible to the enhanced senses built into his powered armor. He hissed out a whispered order for silence and the use of night-vision optics and carefully approached the sound.

The lift tube was in the center of a massive high-ceilinged room littered with workbenches and archeological tools used by the xeno-biologists and xeno-archeologists of the colony. It was doubtlessly where artifacts were examined and cataloged before moving into quarantine in the city above. Faust's forces had smashed most of the machines lining the walls to bits.

Even in the dull green light the half-breeds of Faust were unmistakable as were the dull gurgling whimpers of pain from the man in the center of their tight circle, or rather what was left of one. Large hunks of flesh had been torn from the man's legs and face, the white bone underneath scored with tooth marks. Daul winced; he'd hoped the rumored appetites of the half-breeds were exaggerations. Creatures that preferred to eat their prey alive were terrifying as a concept even when their preferred dish was not man-flesh. The half-breed xenos were as dark and vile as any he'd seen, thick sinuous creatures the size of the abhuman ogryn with crests of bone along their limbs, orange scaly flesh, and a series of whiplike tentacles tipped with venomous barbs. They stood in a tight circle, jabbering and fussing over who got to eat next. The heavy stubbers slung over their shoulders seemingly forgotten in presence of food.

Danzig looked meaningfully at the arco-flagellant. Daul shook his head; the berserker was as likely to kill the Lionhearts as the half-breeds in close quarters. Daul whispered over the vox link, "On three rush for cover, try to encircle them while I meet them head on. Do not try to, _Fabian_ stop! What are you trying to?"

Fabian charged straight at the circle of half-breeds, firing his weapon wildly, and screaming "for the Emperor!" at the top of his voice. His heart was full of the Emperors will and his veins were pumping with morphine.

"Damned drug addled fool," grunted Danzig, "Nothing for it boys. Get into position and fire at will."

It was not the organized military assault that Daul had hoped for. He reached out with his mind and willed the half-breeds not to react. Fabian managed to get close enough to hit the half-breeds with a couple of lucky shots before Daul lost control over the group. One fell to the ground bonelessly it's tentacles twitching wildly. The remaining half-breeds, furious at their interrupted meal and fallen comrade, mercilessly brought their weapons to bear on Fabian. The flak armor of the Lionhearts proved inadequate at such a close range. Fabian stumbled and fell, his body broken and bloody.

"Aim for the necks, the bone crests protect the heads," Daul yelled as he charged forwards. The stubber fire hit his armor at the midriff. It clanged loudly and would no doubt bruise but the armor held. Cairn followed closely, agile mechandrites lifting him over tables and debris, firing a pair of inelegant but powerful las-pistols with mechanical accuracy.

The half-breeds were foul and inhuman, but they were bred for war and death. Their stubbers were the size of small cannons and what they lacked in subtlety they made up for with pure brutality. Danzig screamed, "Get that one!" at large half-breed brandishing a massive chainsaw moments before it cut off Semál's arm at the shoulder. The axe blade, whirring and screeching monstrously, spat up a long gout of blood onto the face of the half-breed that it licked off with relish with a long, snaking tongue. It screamed out a cry of victory before exploding in a cloud of ichors when Verdun hit it in the face shot it with a grenade launcher.

Lasgun fire and the bark of subber rounds echoed thunderously in the hall. Daul grabbed one of the half-breeds and crushed its ribcage with a powerful servo-assisted punch. The disruptive forces of the gauntlet cracked and hissed as they tore apart hunks of muscle and bone. One of the half-breeds pulled a plasma weapon out from a satchel and Daul ducked into cover just as a jet of superheated matter burst past his head, melting part of his right pauldron and damaging the mobility of his right arm.

"Cairn!" Daul bellowed even as a second jet of plasma narrowly missed his leg. The Skitarii, never too far from his Inquisitor master lined up his pistol and fired a single shot between the offending half-breed's eyes before aiming for his next target. Hamman bathed the room with yellow light and the smell of burning flesh as he aimed his flamer at a group of half-breeds taking cover behind a table.

Private Falkan leapt off of a table and onto the back of a half-breed as it reloaded its weapon. The short blade in his hand was more than sharp enough to slice through the carapace of the creature and cut it's larynx, but not before the half breed managed to stuck the Lionheart with one of the venom-tipped barbs along it's tentacles. As the half-breed fell to the ground Falkan's body went into fits. Medicus Gazan rushed to the man's side and started to apply anti-venom and antiseptic gel, stopping only briefly lob a grenade at an approaching half-breed. Sergei took five of the Lionhearts and cut right, covering Gazan as he tried to work on the fallen Lionheart.

Daul was in the middle of it, slicing with the scythe-like claws of his power-fists when he could get in and tossing bolts of psychic energy when he could not. He could feel the rush of lasfire whipping about him at the enemy as the Lionhearts blasted at the foul half-breed soldiers. Then came a cold, horrible empty feeling. A great clawing howl of nothingness screeched at his mind and he tasted blood in his mouth as he approached a large and particularly calculating looking half-breed. _A null_, thought Daul as he felt his knees give out.

Nulls were a psycher's worst nightmare, even weakly warp gifted individuals would feel mind pain and discomfort as they approached one of the psychically dead. It was unlike the other half-breeds. Its head was wide and its mouth was a long and proboscis out of which hung a tongue tipped with a fine barb of bone. Cairn, seeing his master's distress, fired at the creature only to have the shot stop short as it came into contact with a refractor field, "Kill it. Yelled Daul over the vox link."

Cairn, fired wildly at the null as it approached Daul, pointlessly firing at its shields as Daul started to feel himself slipping into nothingness. Someone yelled, "Fire in the hole," and tossed a blue metallic ball at the feet of the null, overloading its shields and ripping its legs to pieces. With a bit more spite than is fitting of a devotee of the Great Cog, Cairn smashed the nulls head with a swipe of a long mechandrite.

Daul, helped by Cairn, got to his feet as the last of the half-breeds fell to the ground dead. Danzig swaggered up to Daul, the cigar in his lips now lit, "I hope you'll pardon the heresy of using a grenade of Tau make to bypass the shields."

"Noted, and forgiven Danzig," Daul said looking at the Dorn unit in distant doorway and feeling foolish for having not giving it the order to charge, "How many did we lose?"

"Four, we lost four."

"Five now sir," it was the voice of Gazan, "I don't know what's in the venom those creatures secrete but my kit isn't doesn't do much more than slow it down."

"Damn," Danzig chewed at his cigar, "Falkan was a good soldier."

"Seems like a lot of soldiers to have at a exit, even when they're expecting trouble," mused Sergi. His face and uniform had become covered with soot from Hamman's flamer. His wide grin stood out brilliantly against the dark soot, "Why do you suppose they were all here?"

"For the meal I suspect," Daul walked over to the half-eaten man and bent down to get a better look. He had to resist the urge to cry out in shock as the man's eyes went wide and his left arm reached up to grab at his tabard. His mouth moved wordlessly in a plea for help.

Gazan rushed over in shock, "How on earth is he still alive?"

"I'd always assumed that the claims of the half-breeds eating someone alive to the last bite were rumors. Look at the wounds, the saliva of the half-breeds must be a natural coagulant," Daul looked down at the man with curiosity, "The femoral artery was severed long ago but there's no pooling at the wound."

"I can save this man."

"No," Daul said as he looked into the Gazan's eyes, "No you cannot."

"You can't mean for us to leave him like this!"

"We haven't the time to heal him Gazan and even if we did we'd only be prolonging his life by a matter of hours till the fifth fleet came," Daul said in a detached tone, "No, we're going to find out what we can from this man and move on."

"Find out what we can? The man is missing his voice box," Falon said disbelievingly.

"I have no need of speech."

Daul looked into the man's eyes and tore into his mind. It was in shambles. The man's world was nothing but pain, betrayal and death. In his agony his conscious mind and his sense of self and had retreated to a dark corner in which to hide, but not far enough. The space of everyone's mind looked different, this man's space was dark and ragged. It was a tortured place. In the middle of a dark void Daul found a huddled man, ragged and bloody. He was babbling incoherently.

"They shouldn't be, nope, can't be. Nope. Not one bit. Smit sees right through them!" He looked up at Daul's astral form, "They aren't right. Shouldn't be."

"No," agreed Daul, "They should not. Smit? That's your name isn't it?"

Smit's eyes focused on Daul

"He came, said we had to obey him. But we aren't fools, not going to be taking in by some heretic scum. We showed him, least we through we did."

"You brought the void shields down on his ship? Soren Faust's ship?"

"That's his name is it? Yes, yes we did. I did. Worked in the dome. My place you see? That's where I worked."

"I see."

"It didn't work though, we sent off a request for help before he took over the colony but too late, far too late. You know what he does to people? What he wants here"

"I suspect I do."

The man cried, "No. No you don't. You think you do. You need to understand. He found it! Knew exactly where to look for it. Where we were supposed to dig for it."

"For what, exactly?"

"The angel. The thing of beauty trapped in stone. The most glorious thing I have ever set eyes on till the day I go to the Golden Throne in the afterlife. He found it and took it. The Kosh was stolen from where it hid, took him. Wanted his secrets he did. Hid in the dark days from the starfeeders."

The man's eyes shook and the world of his mind grew darker. He was dying and by staying in the man's mind Daul risked dying along with him, "Smit I need you to focus. Where is Faust?"

"Where do all kings sit? On a throne on high."

"Smit, I need you to be more clear? Smit?" Smit's eyes closed feebly and his mind fell to shadow. As Daul pulled away from it he felt the icy clawing of death nipping at his skin. He took a deep breath and shook his head to clear his mind.

"Sir? Are you ok sir?" Danzig was looking at him worriedly.

"Fine Danzig, I'm just fine," the cold fingers still grabbed at his flesh but they were becoming less biting on his skin and he no longer heard the distant voices. He would be fine soon.

"You just stopped moving for and then started to twitch. Gazan wanted to check your vitals but the Skitrarii wouldn't let him."

"Your concern is noted but unnecessary. Cairn, I need you to upload the schematics for the city into my HUD. We're going to have to split up."

Cairn agrily warbled out a negative.

"It's not up for debate, someone has to sabotage the plasma reactors and you're the only one I trust to do it without blowing us all to hell. The Lionhearts are more than capable of destroying it but would be hard pressed to do so without causing a chain reaction of some sort by accident. Take Danzig and half the Lionhearts and head to the reactors, that's not a suggestion that's an order."

"Where you will be taking Sergei and his squad if I might ask sir?" Danzig looked as confused as Cairn as Daul approached one of the many wide domed transport tubes at the center of the room.

"I'm going after Faust."

–

Kerrigan was furious. The machine in front of her was a beautiful and elaborate device. It was the sort of machine that few Magos would have the opportunity to work on in their lifetimes and for the life of her she could not figure out what was wrong with it. The power-couplings were in place and properly blessed. The correct incense had been placed at the base of the command consul after the runes of activation had been pressed. Even the proper rituals of cognitive assistance had been done and yet the ancient machine spirit refused to work because she had not answered its riddle.

She could not tell if it was simply the senility of this particular machine or an added security measure but every time she tried to activate the machine it spat back a series of numbers and demanded she input the next in the series.

1

11

21

1211

111221

312211

13112221

}-Input Code- {

She had tired the command overrides available to her but this was a truly ancient piece of archeotech, in order to appease the spirit inside she would have to answer it's riddle but for the life of her she could not think what to type.

Worse still it was a series six cipher, if she were to type in the wrong answer the machine spirit would shut down and they would have to start the hours long process of activation over from the beginning. Assuming they could start it at all the time for the use of the great machine would long since have passed. But that would be failure. Kerrigan was not about to fail.

"Mistress," one of her attendants approached her, "We are consulting your personal archives but we are unsure where to start."

"Don't bother," Kerrigan's eyes were fixed on the numbers, "I've memorized the lot of them. This is not part of it. It's a puzzle, a riddle."

"A security measure."

"I suspect that the machine has grown bored in its long period of disuse. This is its way of appeasing its ego after having abandoned it for so long. It wants an apology."

"Of course mistress. Do you want us to perform the rites of reuse?"

"Yes, I feel that would be best. The prayer's of cogitation too. It's only a matter of a half hour before Sánclair starts to fire on the city in earnest and must be prepared to use the machine the second the shields fall."

If it weren't, the consequences would be dire.

–

Danzig could not stop himself from feeling apprehensive about separating from the Inquisitor. The specifics of the exit strategy had not been made clear in the mission briefing and he suspected that were there to be an emergency extraction it would be those closes to Daul to be rescued. He wasn't even entirely convinced Cairn was human. For all Danzig knew the Skitarii's machine enhanced brains could simply be copied at will and their physical body was simply a shell. Still it seemed unlikely that the Captain would let them die so easily.

Presumably the Skitarii had some form of internal map in his mind that he could consult but the Lionhearts themselves were effectively blind. The colonists had gone through the corridors of the facility and burned the maps off the walls in order to blind Faust, effectively blinding the Lionhearts as well.

"Damned unnerving if you ask me sir," Fadir said as they passed yet another abandoned building, "I was expecting a real dust up after that first fight but this place is just... empty."

"It's a service area Fadir," Danzig shrugged, "I doubt there would be many people other than the tech servitor or odd tech priest at the best of times."

"Still creepy sir. It's like one of the dead levels of the ship, I keep expecting to get captured by a Bendy at any moment," Sala'ha eyed the Skitarii with mild amusement, "At least Clockwork seems to be at home."

Indeed Cairn did seem to be at peace in the mechanical underbelly of the domed city, the sound of pistons churning and the warm fog of steam was making the Skitarii almost chipper, or at least as close to chipper as he ever seemed to get. How the Inquisitor read the Skitarii's emotionless body and stale, mechanical expression was a mystery to Danzig. The Skitarii seemed to have a grasp of humor, though most of his jokes seemed to be private ones only understood by the Inquisitor. He supposed that being a psychic factored into it somehow.

It was unnerving to follow the silent giant. The Lionhearts had to mutely follow Cairn through the winding corridors of the Belzafest domed city and simply trust that he was heading in the right direction. The silent man's mechanical manner and emotionless demeanor was unnerving at best. It wasn't that Danzig disliked the man, but how was he supposed to interact with something so inhuman? Especially in the dull green light of his night-vision optics he looked strange and alien.

"Are we far from the generators?"

Cairn said nothing but warily eyed the narrow corridor in the distance. He nodded but his manner became more cautious and he started to follow what little cover there was more closely.

"Are their any enemies between us and it?"

Cairn took out his auspex and fiddled with it as they marched. Eventually he put it down and shrugged noncommittally as he upholstered his pistols as he nodded at the balcony above the entrance to the main reactor.

"Is that a yes or a no?"

Cairn grabbed Danzig by the collar, yanking him into cover moments before a searing jet of flame shot over his head. The Lionhearts started firing wildly at dark shapes in the distance and rushing for cover. Danzig winced as he hit the treaded ferrocrete on the ground. As Danzig lifted himself off the ground, head still swirling with punch-drunk confusion, he took the time in between violent outbursts of swearing to give Cairn a withering look.

The Skitarii either didn't notice or was too busy firing at the sinewy beasts charging them to care. A set of distinctly canine half-breeds with long, gaunt maws, and talon tipped feet charged the Lionhearts as the ducked to avoid the fire of an small-bore auto-cannon leapt off the second story balcony and rushed towards the Lionhearts. Cairn managed to kill the first with a well-placed shot to the eye but only managed to graze the flank of the second as it vaulted over a chemical vat and started to tear into the exposed flesh of Boalan's neck. An enraged Pilar tried to pry the creature off Boalan but only managed to get a deep slash along his shoulder for his trouble.

"Die you xenos freak," Boalan managed to gurgle out as he drove his bayonet into the creature's stomach. The creature ignored its hanging entrails and simply bit off Boalan's head. It rounded on Pilar only to have its head implode under a concentrated blast of lasfire from Pillar's sidearm.

"Ten hostiles left on the balcony sir," Farast chuckled as he sighted his lasgun at one of the moving shadows in the distance. He breathed out and fired, the gun bucking briefly with a crack of ionized air. The shape in the distance at which he'd been aiming ceased to move, "Make that nine. Good enough sport for you Fadir?"

Fadir looked up from reloading his own weapon behind cover and flinched when an enemy grenade shot burst against the loading crane he was crouched behind. Shrapnel flew out from the space between the wheels, wedging painfully between his ribs. He spat up a bloody bit of phlegm, "A bit too active for my liking sir."

Gazan rushed up to Fadir to examine the wound, just barely managing to avoid getting shot himself as he jumped a behind the crane. Danzig lobbed a grenade at the distant enemies as the sound of another dog-beast approached. The creature whimpered and died, some genetic compulsion forcing it to try and snap at the flying ball with its jaws.

Danzig tapped his vox link, "Gazan, how bad is he?"

Gazan had a bedside manner second to none on the battlefield. The man was just as much of an adrenaline addict as the rest of the regiment but his calm and clinical manner didn't change even as bullets narrowly whipped by his head. With nimble fingers and wise eyes he examined the wound at Fadir's side. Gazan smiled at Fadir as he pulled a set of silver forceps out of his bag, "He'll live. This is going to hurt like hell to get out and a doubt he'll be too happy with me for a while," he smiled a comically exaggerated look of sadness at Fadir, "but as soon as I pull the shrapnel out and dress the wound he'll be fit for combat. He'll be, _get down you damned fool!_"

Semal never had a chance to do so. As soon as he stood up and started to spin a grenade around in a sling, presumably to lob it up to the balcony beyond, he had been cut down by steady stream of auto-cannon fire. He fell to the ground, his sling falling limply at his side. Wahal barely had time to scream before the two of them burst in a fine cloud of pink mist and shrapnel.

"Throne cursed gun. Skitarri Thross no chance you have any bright ideas to get us out of this mess?"

Cairn looked into the distance and pointed to a spot above the balcony upon which the half-breeds stood. Danzig popped up and cautiously looked down the sight on his rifle and smiled as he tapped his vox bead, "Sala'ha do you read me?"

"Yes sir."

"Shoot the conduit above that damned fixed gun," Danzig flinched as another stream of auto-cannon fire raked along the pipes he was ducked behind. The echoing ricochet of auto-cannon rounds was thunderous.

"Not the gun itself?"

"Just do it."

"Yes sir."

Danzig shuddered as another salvo of auto-cannon fire raked his position, denting the pipes he was using for cover. He muttered out a brief prayer to the Emperor as the bright streaking light of a hotshot long-las streaked down ten meters of corridor. The conduit exploded in a brilliant shower of sparks and light. Several live wires dropped from the burst conduit, sparking and surging with barely controlled energy. More than enough energy to ignite the ammunition supplies for the auto-cannon. n. The eviscerated charred bodies of the half-breeds flew off the balcony in a syrupy mess of flesh and ichors.

Danzig smiled and turned to Cairn, "You do have a special talent for destruction my friend."

Cairn simply looked to the destroyed conduit with shame.

The main plaza of the Belzafest colony was out of a nightmare. The colonists, what few of them were left, had been cordoned off into slave paddocks made from electroshock cable lashed together around human bones. It served as both a physical cage and a tool of emotional torture. Faust loved such devices. They found several lone half-breed soldiers at the paddocks satisfying their urge for food or their own lust. They were far too concentrated on their own hedonistic debauchery to notice the Lionhearts till it was too late.

Faust's megalomania demanded that he be situated in the most central building of the Facility, of that Daul was sure. He would have it in the center of everything so that he wouldn't have to go to far to reach the slave pens from which he extracted the raw materials necessary for creating and feeding his half-breed army. Not for the first time he worried about his own humanity as he was forced to march past the cheering and pleading slave enclosures on the basement floor of the control complex for Belzafest. _These people have no reason to be cheering for me_, thought Daul, _they'll die in less than a day and their blood will be on my hands, Throne forgive me. _

Whatever guilt Daul felt as they passed the ragged and emaciated Belzafest natives in their cages it was nothing compared to the guild of Sergei and the Lionhearts. Every time a mother held our her child begging Sergi for a blessing or to take her child to safety it look a little bit away from the boisterous Lionheart. Daul was eternally thankful that it was in a common Damascan dialect that that Sergi chose to voice his ethical concerns rather than low Gothic. He didn't want to rob these people of their last moments of hope for salvation.

"Sir, can't we at least let them out of their cells?"

Daul shook his head, "We enough problems without worrying about civilians getting in the way or bumbling about trying to help. This group hasn't eaten more than corpse-meal portage in months. Best to leave them where they are."

"Can't we save any of them?"

"I will not risk allowing anyone infected with the half-breed genes to leave this planet. We have enough natural horrors to be getting on with without manufacturing new ones," Daul said patiently, "They will all be dead in twenty four hours. We cannot waste more time here."

"Wouldn't it be possible," Sergei's teeth ground together with every word, " To countermand that order?"

"All things are possible under the Emperor's will but not under mine. I will not countermand that order. We are here to do an unhappy task. Let it be."

Sergei moved in front of Daul's massive armored form and looked straight into the emotionless skull mask's eyes unblinkingly. His voice was one of barely controlled rage and sorrow, "Sir, _please_ help these people. Let me help these people."

Daul sighed and looked into the hopeful and hungry faces in the slave paddocks. He was their hero; many of them had already started the primarch's blessing. To leave these people would be the act of a monster. "Sergei," Daul sighed.

The face of Sergi lit up and his smile brightened, but for naught, "Sergei we cannot help these people. It is monstrous to leave them but it is my duty to be a monster if the Empire calls for it. If you need to satisfy your conscience then seek revenge on me later but we cannot be slowed by this now."

Sergei's face hardened and his smile disappeared entirely. Daul had never been quite so pleased to see a well-armed group of paramilitary heretic xenobreeds. Sergei scowled, "This isn't over Inquisitor."

"Later Sergei," Daul focused his frustrations and tossed bolts of psychic lighting into the center of the group. The half-breeds screamed with shock and pain. The Lionhearts opened up with a bright salvo of lasfire, cutting down ten half breeds in as many seconds. However one of the half-breeds, a massive brute bull of a creature simply laughed off the lasfire as it crackled and sizzled against a corona of psychic energies in front of him.

"Spawn of Horus!" Screamed Yonal as he switched to auto fire and started to fire at the creature's head with a continuous stream of high-powered lasfire. The brute simply laughed and charged with a massively oversized chain blade. Yonal screamed as the blade went for his head faster than he could dodge, but the whirring blades of the sword streaked as they scythed against the closed fist of Daul's gauntleted fist.

The creature yowled in frustration and punched towards Daul's face with its free hand. Daul caught it at the wrist, severing it at the wrist. The creature screamed and howled, wrenching its chain blade free and impotently stabbing at Daul with its venom-tipped barbs.

The creature stabbed and twisted it's bade, wildly flailing it's stump in an effort to blind Daul's optics with it's thick ichorous blood. Daul because quickly alarmed when the stump where the arm sued to be quickly reformed and re-molded into a chitinous tentacle that exuded pale warp fire.

"I've had enough of this. Dercius empower deliver 7-2-2."

At the sound of the secret command words spoken by his master the previously motionless Dorn leapt into action. He was a twirling mess of hatred and death, his long barbed electroshock whips ripped and tore at the great brute's flesh and burned down to his bone. The brute tried to slice at Dorn with its chain-blade but it kept being parried and dodged by the wildly flailing and erratic servitor warrior.

Eventually the creature took a wild sweep that overbalanced it and Dorn was able to get behind it and hamstring it with wild sweeps from its whips before beating it into a bloody pulp of nothing. As the creature sat on the ground in a bloody mess of it's own blood and viscera Daul yelled, "Scorn is it's own reward." Dorn promptly regressed to his previous state of inaction even as he rounded on a nearby Lionheart.

Daul walked up to the brute and crushed his head into a pulp before heading towards the massive doors of the central command building, "Hamman, burn it."

"Don't have to tell me twice sir."

–

Selcan Porst was a man built like a stump. He was squat, wide, thick, and covered in knotted bulges of muscle that seemed unnatural on his more subdued frame. While he had no love of cruelty he had no particular qualms with it either, making him an ideal second in command for the mercurial and capricious Faust. As the inquisitor approached the door to the wide spire of the command center he took a long drag of the cigar between his lips and looked to his employer, "I don't think the door will hold him."

His employer did not respond to him the first time so he repeated himself loudly, "The door won't hold them sir. They're getting in."

"I heard you the first time Porst." The tall man behind him waved a pale, nearly translucent hand dismissively not looking up with his work. The silver scalpel in the pale man's hands was still dripping with pale red blood and small flecks flew up and stained Porst's shirt, "He's gotten here faster than expected but not much faster."

Porst shrugged and tried to ignore the screams of the creature on the table beneath Faust's knife, "Do we proceed with the plan?"

"Of course you will," the pale man's voice sounded shrill, "Delay him or kill him, but give me the time to launch."

"Shall I dispose of the specimen?" Porst eyed the cowed and bleeding creature.

"No, if this fails I want someone to understand why."

"Will he understand?"

"Not now, but perhaps eventually. Prepare Porst, prepare. I must spend more time with our guest before I leave," Faust looked back at the pathetic and broken creature beneath him, "Pathetic Vorlon slime. You let the universe fall to hell for your arrogance. Now it is up to me to fix your mistakes."

–

A/N: Hey! Please review this story; any input at all would be useful. I'm writing this as an exercise to get used to writing novel length fiction but it only really works as an exercise if people tell me what they do and don't like about my stories. `

Thank you for reading :D


	5. Chapter 5

The exterior door to the command spire imploded under the force of ten kilograms of det-chord. The few seconds of chaos and smoke just barely gave Daul and the Lionhearts the time to rush into cover. Like most facilities in the Empire the spire was not without defenses in case of rebellion or invasion. The walls of grand cathedral of the entrance hall were dotted with a half dozen leering gargoyles concealing a wicked array of lethal turret weapons. The shadowed recesses of the vaulted ceiling flashed brightly as tracer rounds rocketed towards the door. Sandar hesitated as he rushed through the door, fear briefly overtaking him. The momentary indecision was his undoing as his legs were cut out from under him, his kneecaps reduced to nothing. He fell down the stairs behind the door screaming in pain.

"I thought the clockwork man was supposed to have disabled these damn things. They're linked to the main reactor aren't they?" yelled Sergei as he batted out a small fire in the dangling silk sash he wore round his waist. He winced at the crack of laser fire from beyond the door. Sandar had taken his own life rather than be found by the half-breeds.

"He must have been delayed. Faust will no doubt have guarded the reactors as well as he's secured the spire," Daul yelled back between hurling blots of psychic energy at the leering gargoyles, "We'll have to assume that the turrets won't be disabled in time. Try to aim for the power cables feeding into them, sever those and the machine spirits should lose the will to fight."

"Damned angry spirits they are at that sir," groused Hamman as he looked into the distance, "Two lift tubes sir."

"We'll have to split up, I'll take Dorn in the one. You take the other. Take this data crystal, you'll need it to force a manual override of the system so that they can't force the lift to stop midway." He pulled out a green crystal from his tabard that Sergi pocketed.

"Both of them seem to be large enough for all of us if we can get to them," said Sergei as he squinted into the distance. The hall was dimly lit but the distant overhead light of the transport tubes was visible.

"This suit weighs an even two tons, I could not hope for it to lift us all. Come on, we'll have to continue forwards, turrets or no. Our time is limited and unless I miss my guess Sánclair will be firing in… oh my," Daul looked at his chronometer, "Cairn not having done his part may yet be a blessing, we've arrived late."

"If you say so sir," Sergei said as he fired a shot into the mechanical undercarriage of one of the gargoyles. His shot pierced the ammunition feed and burst the turret in a brilliant ball of flame, "All the same I'd rather not be fighting these damned turrets."

A bright, blinding light flashed as the blast shutters slammed shut on the windows to the command spire. The distant screams of fear from the Belzafest colonists in the slave pens echoed shrilly as the ground shifted and shook. Daul blinked stars out of his eyes and looked back to his chronometer and trying to ignore the sense of dread at being inside of a colony mid-barrage and the screaming klaxons going off citywide, "Better than taking the full force of a bombardment from the _Bounty_. There's somewhere we'd all rather be soldier, now hurry up and take these damned things out. "

The group bobbed and weaved through the various upturned desks, shattered statues, and great stone pillars, firing for the turrets as they went. Daul lost his footing on a loose bit of ferrocrete and caught a head on blast from an auto cannon that burst on his armor. It tore a gaping rent in his chest armor but not the layer of flak underneath. Daul ignored the warning flashes on the HUD in his helmet and tossed a bolt of psychic force at the offending turret. It crumpled and burst.

"Are you alright sir?" Hamman's voice was strained. The man was always edgy when dealing with something that could not be killed with his flamer.

"It's a scratch," Daul said as he pulled a cylinder of sealant out of a pocket in his tabard. Thick foam filled the opening in his armor, quickly sealing itself and forming a bond over the jagged tear, "But I wouldn't want to take another hit there soon."

Daul flinched as Vazziz burst in two, showering his armor in a spray of his guts and viscera. There was some xenotech devilry at work, of that Daul was sure. These turrets were far too accurate. The machine spirits of the standard prefabricated complexes used on border worlds were lazy and prone to bouts of mischief. The turrets firing at Daul had been precise and methodical, aiming at the joints in his powered armor where its protection would be weakest, too clever for the more whimsical mass-produced machine spirits.

Yonal screamed as his finger was torn away from his body in a burst of gore. He whipped his rifle up and fired blindly while crying in pain, his rife on full automatic fire. He continued to fire long after he'd managed to destroy the turret and kept pressing down on the trigger after exhausting its power pack. Evaan had to wrestle him to the ground in order to dress his wound and administer a painkiller.

It was then that Daul noticed a turret firing wildly at a bit of stray bit of debris. _Of course_, it was foolish of him not to have thought of it earlier. The facility, though full of systems fabricated by the Oita Forge would not have been able to afford Oita make for all of its systems. Some bureaucrat had decided to save a sovereign on the defense turrets. It was a damned foolish decision that Daul could be nothing but grateful for, "They're using basic wide band auspex sensors!"

"Inquisitor if you insist on speaking in riddles and techno-sorcery we are all going to get killed. They're using what?"

"There has to be an auspex array somewhere that they're getting data from. Somewhere with a good view of everything, somewhere protected, somewhere that people wouldn't notice," Daul turned around and looked up to the keystone of the arched ceiling, "Somewhere that would be damn near suicidal to shoot at."

Sergi crawled along the ground to a bit of cover opposite from Daul. He flinched when a stray ricochet pinged past his face and nearly jumped when a bit of drool dripped from Dorn's gormless smile onto his hand. Grimacing slightly he wiped off the spittle on his pant-leg, squinting at the ceiling. Keen eyes darted about in consternation eyeing every angle.

"Suicidal is right sir, shooting that will collapse the ceiling," he shot Dorn another murderous look as a second great glob of spittle dripped down on his shoulder and muttered angrily in ancient Damascan. Apparently the words for "filthy" and "mutt" of modern Damascan were the similar in both the modern and ancient dialect.

"Only in the entrance hall, if we knock out the turrets we ought to have enough time to reach the lift tubes in time for us to climb in and frankly it ought to cut off reinforcements for Faust. I have no doubt that there are many hundreds more half-breeds still in the city proper. This should serve to stop, or at least slow their advance. Head for the one on the left, I'll head for the one on the right with Dorn."

"Mad as all hell you are sir," Sergei said in a tone of grudging respect, his smile took on the manic aspect that so characterized the Lionhearts and he yelled out to Var in ancient Damascan. Var blinked nonplussed and pointed up. Sergei scowled and yelled back in gruff low gothic, "Yes I damn well know the roof is going to bloody well come down! Just be ready to move when it does."

Var shrugged and loaded a krak shot into the grenade launcher. It whistled as it shot upwards and collided with the arch, bursting into a brilliant ball of fire. Sergi screamed, "**Move**," at the top of his voice even as he lifted his hands in front of his face to protect his face from falling debris.

"Move you miserable lump of a creature," Daul's face contorted in frustration behind his helmet as he yanked the servitor along behind him. Dorn had been sanding still, giggling as the two-ton ferrocrete bricks collided with the floor. He continued to giggle midair as Daul heaved him into his shoulders and carry him to the lift.

The doors to the lift slammed shut and echoed with the thunderous crashing of ferrocrete and adamantium in the entrance hall. The lights inside the lift flickered and died before switching to the emergency lights, bathing the interior of the lift in a dull red light. Daul righted himself and rearranged his tabard, eying the wet spot where Dorn had drooled on it with distaste. "Disgusting, positively disgusting, I really must housebreak you Dorn."

Dorn stared back smiling that disturbingly cruel smile behind his bushy beard.

"Bah," Daul pulled the data crystal out of his tabard and plugged it into the control panel. The lift's lights flashed back to white and the tube ground back into motion causing Dorn to shift drunkenly as his servitor mind struggled to adjust to the shifting ground, "I should have left you. It would have served you right, damned creepy beast that you are."

Dorn looked at Daul with his head cocked at a jaunty angle, his morpha cables flopping down from his helmet and beard making him look distinctly like a deranged spaniel. Daul could just see the listless grey eyes behind the helmet's visor staring vaguely into the distance. There was a benign innocence in them that belied the cruelty of his smile, but it had been the same in Dorn's life prior to lobotomy. Perhaps Daul would be lucky and the Emperor would see fit for Dorn to pass into the next life. Daul would certainly not mourn his passing.

He tapped his helmet to activate a comm. channel to the Lionhearts but only heard static. "The thrice damned lift must be radiation shielded. We can only hope for the best… and I'm talking to a servitor as though he were about to respond to me I truly have been spending time around the Skitarii."

Dorn shifted gently from foot to foot, rocking with the motion of the elevator. He giggled with each bump and made bubbles with his mouth.

"The rubble should slow down their re-enforcements. That's something at least, the command overrides ought to disable the lifts once we've reached the top meaning that they'll have climb the stairs. Even then they're going to have to cut through the blast shield on every level to reach the top," Daul knew it was a terrible habit but he found that talking himself through every aspect of his situation calmed his nerves. He could not afford to let his mind be clouded by adrenaline and the frenzied pumping of his heart.

Dorn gurgled contentedly and watched the buttons flash in time with the rising of the elevator. The relaxed posture of his body clashed noticeably with the cruel smile behind his bushy beard and the dead sightless eyes behind the visor. His bare feet made fleshy scuffling noises on the plush carpet of the lift as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. "That the Emperor has seen fit to save you when all others in my service are long dead is beyond my understanding Dorn," Daul checked the patch on his side to see if it had burst after rapid movement, "They didn't leave you enough brains to remember to feed yourself. Then again, I suppose the less of you they left in the better. You are destined to find penance in sacrifice but I suspect that He only wants you to take the parts of you worth having to the hereafter. And there wasn't much worth sending to him beforehand, not much now either… not really. I suppose you are a test send to me, suffering and frustration to deal with you for the few moments where you're of any use."

He glowered at the servitor, "Having to carry you away from a falling ceiling… _honestly_! I must have a talk with Kerrigan about installing _some_ sense of self preservation in you or I will simply never be able to finish anything for fear that you might die of some foolishness before I've decided that you ought to," he chuckled at his own grim joke. He didn't find it funny but any verbal cruelty he could inflict on Dorn gave him no small satisfaction, "but at least that damned cave in ought to give us some time to finish our work, the won't get re-enforcements through till they clear that rubble, Throne willing that is."

The past three years of his life had been leading up to this confrontation. Now that Faust was just within his grasp he could not help but feel a giddy rush of adrenaline. No, there was no time for that. He could not afford for his mind to be clouded with rage anticipation, he must treat Faust with the same level of clear headedness as any other heretic. Faust was just like any other heretic but Dorn's issues with him were personal.

Faust's crimes were without number and his evil without measure but when Daul choked the life out of him with his bare fists in an interrogation cell it would be to avenge a single death. One wholly undeserving the cruel death he received at Faust's hands. What little of Daul's household was left after the Tyranid incursion fled to the fortress monastery of his mentor Inquisitor Lord Martin Gaal. Gaal had always been like a father to him and had been the closest thing he'd had to family for some eighty years. So long as his people reached Gaal Daul had no fear that any harm could reach them. He had been mistaken.

It had been foolish to use a military decryption in order to issue orders to his household but he'd been unsure if anything other than a military transmission would reach the planet at all. Faust had followed them to the hive city that held Gaal's fortress monetary and lain siege to the fortress. By the time Daul reached it the monastery was little more than rubble, only the sub-basement fortress complex remained. Gaal's soldiers had held it dearly but vainly; Daul found what little was left of Gaal crucified on the great aquilla that hung behind his desk. Faust had piled their bodies haphazardly beneath the crucifix. Gaal had died a hero's death trying to save the women and children of Daul's house who'd come to seek refuge.

Faust had intended it to be a warning to those who interfere in his plans.

It had not had the desired effect

"I will see him flayed alive Dorn. I will do things to him that would have made you cringe. I will break every thing about him and turn his life's work to dust and ashes," he had promised as much as he knelt in the shattered ruins of his former master's household, weeping like a babe. He had little enough joy in his life without losing what little family he could claim. Faust had stolen part of his heart that day and Daul had filled the emptiness in his heart a with cold and brooding malice.

By the time the lift reached the command level of the spire Daul's anger and apprehension had bled away and only the cool determination remained, sharp as a razor's edge. As he stepped out from the lift there seemed only one acceptable outcome, Faust would die. The wretched stench of the half breeds billowed into the lift as the doors opened, strong even through the rebreathing apparatus of Daul's helmet. He exited the lift and his heart caught in his throat, the door to the second lift, the one that the Lionhearts had taken was sealed by a void shield. The command crystal he'd given them had either shorted out or been cracked in the fighting. The Lionhearts would not reach the command level in time, not without a meltagun anyway. He could not affort to wait for them to find an alternate path.

"Can time never be on my side? Emperor grant me grace."

The hallway leading to the command center was long and opulent. Silk tapestries hung from the ceilings in front of each door declaring the outrageously exaggerated family genealogies, histories and, accomplishments of the colonial office holders. The colonial officials had no doubt been the first to die but the elegance of their apartments no doubt suited Faust's ego.

Daul sensed a pair of half-breeds before he saw them in the gloom. They were lurking in the shadows near the door of a luxurious apartment. Their predatory instincts were strong but Faust had not gifted them with an equal measure of common sense.

Daul walked forwards nonchalantly, pretending not to have noticed the two bulky predators slinking behind him. Goaded by his apparent weakness the two pounced, long claws and powerful jaws ready to tear through armor and into flesh. Two brilliant bolts of pure psychic force pulped their heads into mush midair. The bodies fell to the ground and twitched eerily in deat. Dorn followed Daul. The servitor paused only briefly to stare at their twitching corpses, curving his lips in fascination.

The doors to the offices were open. Most had been torn off their hinges by the half breeds during the initial assault on Belzafest. There were thousands of hiding places and though Daul no longer smelled their stink he could not help but feel that he was being watched. It was an eery sensation that prickled along the back of his neck, setting him on edge. The space was dead, dank, and dark. The damaged florescent lights flickered and spat sparks, giving the tapestries the illusion of motion though there was no breeze down the corridor.

Daul broke in to a dead run as he reached the end of the corridor, building up momentum. He struck the rich double doors that lead to the command center with a jarring crash of metal. The doors, already worn from Faust's assault, bent and crumpled to the side.

They were waiting.

There had to be twenty of them. Twenty of the largest half-breeds Daul had ever seen, each of them sporting eight tentacles covered in barbed spines that coiled and uncoiled around great sinuous arms. They stood in a wide phalanx in front of some dozen or so hard faced men working tirelessly at their data stations. At the center of this cadre, sitting on the plush throne of the colonial governor, was a man in wearing elegant silks and wide brimmed hat, smiling greedily at the sight of Daul. He put a thick cigar to his lips and puffed at aged talbac, "You're too late Inqusitor."

"Not so late as you assume," Daul walked into the command center flanked closely by Dorn. And in a voice full of as much bravado as he could muster as he walked forwards, "You underestimate me. So does Faust. Tell me where he is hiding before I tear it from you Porst."

The man laughed and snapped his fingers; a void shield flickered into life around Daul faster than he could blink. Daul tossed a bolt of psychic energies at the shield that sparked and spattered but did little else, "Inquisitor do you honestly think my employer has survived centuries by sitting around waiting to be cornered? My employer started the preflight checks the second you came out of warp.

Emperor almighty, a ship. The throne cursed traitor had another ship.

The deep cavern in which the primary reactor for the city sat made Danzig slightly homesick. The plasma generators that powered the city were massive, larger still than any generators Danzig had ever seen. Pulses of blue-white crackled as they pulsed their way down the hundreds upon hundreds of cables feeding into the cavernous ceiling and the city above.

The air was dry and smelled of ozone and lubricant, and the distant throbbing hum of machines was startlingly similar to the sounds and smells of the facility where the children of Lionhearts received their early training. The children would cry for their mothers at first, the machines were loud and frightening and the dormitory in which they slept was often dark. After a few days with the surly corporal who played nursemaid for young Lionhearts the children soon learned that they feared the unknown sounds and clashes of the machine less than they feared the well-worn switch of Corporal Maziv. He was a hard man but not a cruel man, most of the Lionhearts affectionately referred to the man as "Mom" though none of them dared to do so within earshot of Maziv himself.

As he led the handful of men down the wide stairwell to the command platform that sat above the deep chasm he could not help but hear the gruff voice of Maziv, "Don't you bother to be falling over the edge now boy. You fall over the edge of a plasma reactor and it's the Emperor himself you'll be explaining your clumsiness to. The Emperor don't suffer wooly headed scrum like you lightly."

The platform sat hovering above the center of the generator itself, reachable only by a wide bridge lined with thick ferrocrete pillars and steel support struts. In the distance, obscured partially by the glare of the plasma discharges, a lone figure sat at the command consul of the generator, a single man, and no guards.

"Cairn, does that look like a half breed to you?" The Skitarii's face puckered with concentration as his optics focused and re-focused on the shape in the distance. After a few moments consideration he shook his head, his mechanical tentacles waved lazily.

"Sir," Fadir was looking at a cracked chronometer with trepidation as he shielded his eyes with his hand, "We're already behind schedule as is. If we don't have those generators down soon the plan will not proceed. Our mission is still technically a success so long as Faust dies but I'd prefer not to be in the list of acceptable losses."

"You think I don't know that," Danzig spat on the ground, "Burn me, we've got no choice. One half-breed with his throat cut is as good as none at all. If I'm going to end up at the foot of the Throne I intend to say I died doing my duty not lollygagging around like a deckhand on his first shore leave. Fadir, you take point."

Fadir smiled and slunk forwards. Even with a broken rib he was still the fastest and surefooted of Danzig's men. He should have been born a cat, at least then he would have an excuse for how his feet never seemed to make a sound no matter how fast he moved or how far he jumped. Sala'ha shouldered his long-las and turned to Danzig in a false whisper, "The boy takes altogether too much joy from his work."

"And you spend altogether too much time moving your lips," Danzig said in a surly tone. Fadir did like stealth a bit more than was healthy and he was too handsome for his own good by half. His own unique talent for mischief and caring smile often landed him into trouble, though Fadir would never call it such. More than once the young Lioheart had been near court marshal for having made his way into the bedchambers of the noble ladies of the _Endless Bounty_. The women of the bounty did seem to have a curious habit of having strapping young soldiers arrested when they were caught sneaking into their dressing rooms then dropping the charges in private after the fact. Danzig sometimes wondered if Fadir found less sport in the women than he did in sneaking past the jealous husbands and angry fathers.

Fadir was a sneaky and unscrupulous bastard but he was Danzig's sneaky and unscrupulous bastard. He could not help but feel a small measure of pride as Fadir shot forward, leading the silent charge with muffled footfalls. If the man in the chair noticed the six Lionhearts and single Skitarii he gave no notice, he seemed wholly enthralled by the terminal in front of him. He muttered to himself angrily, some in low gothic, some in a screeching language that he'd only ever heard spoken by Cairn. He suspected that the binary was no more cogent than the gothic. Cairn certainly gave no expression that he'd heard anything resembling sense. But the man was clearly in pain, deep pain.

"Turn, spin… it works _NO_ I work It and I are we now, 90% _pain_ pain hurt, am I hurt? No, we are not. But are we a we or am I me? Hurt, now die. But no weapons. I am not the ship, where is the ship? This is not a ship."

Insane ramblings, he was probably some poor fool that had been captured by Faust. By all accounts Faust took prisoners and the results were often unpleasant and usually irreversible. At least he would be able to put this man out of his misery. Danzig looked to Fadir and sliced a finger across his neck.

Fadir nodded and pulled out a slender knife. Its blade's silver sheen had been dulled with soot but its point was as sharp as any. Fadir grabbed the man from behind and drove his dagger across his throat as far as he could manage. The man's head jerked backwards and his body went slack as the blade sliced along his neck. Fadir whooped triumphantly before recoiling in horror as the man started to shift about in spite of his near decapitation. The man's voice gurgled as his lips tried to make words through his severed voicebox. The near corpse lifted itself on a frame of mechanical tendrils that fed into the ground beneath the chair, fingers twitching and his legs convulsing. The man's eyes rolled about wildly and his severed flesh was knitted together by bands of silvery black metal and he began to speak in clipped screeches. Cairn froze in horror listening to the screeching binary and for once Danzig was grateful not to understand a word of it.

"Threat assessment, determine… what am I? I am he, machine, pain, bring death, ships weapons. Am I the ship? There are no weapons, a ship must have weapons.."

"Throne Almighty!" Danzig made the sign of the aquilla over his heart and started reciting the chant of unity in his head. He turned to the other Lionhearts all of whom were staring at the rising figure openmouthed, "Don't stand there like it's a goddamned holo vid shoot it!"

Woken from their surprised stupor they leapt into action, weapons on full automatic. The air cracked and sizzled with the sounds of laser fire. Bright streams of energy cut into the man but they might as well have been yelling at it crossly for all the good it did them. He simply twitched with each shot, his body filling in the holes with the same murky black metallic substace shouting random phrases.

From his perch Sala'ha got in a good shot to the man's heart. Dark eyes focused on Sala'ha as though for the first time noticing an attack. It's mouth opened wide like a python before belching up a great ball of phosphorescent blue. Sala'ha dodged the ball and ducked behind one of the pillars, swearing loudly as the crates he'd been standing on burst in a shower of white hot metal shards. He rolled back into cover, wincing as shrapnel stung at his back and side.

"Weapons… weapons… I _am_ the weapons!"

Fahal screamed as bolt of lightning shot from the man's hand. The burst deftly tossed Fahal in one direction and his arm in the other. Gazan grabbed Fahal and dragged the sobbing man behind cover. He would need to have it replaced with a prosthetic assuming that the shock or the blood loss didn't kill him outright_._ By the Throne but how do you kill something that didn't die when you shot it in the blasted head?

Falin pulled a melta charge out of his sachel only to have it grabbed away by Sala'ha. Sala'ha chastised Falin furiously, "Have you lost your wits? We're standing above the Throne cursed reactor core. It does us no good to kill him if we die as well. If you want to die on your own time do so but don't blow me up in the process."

"What else do you suggest we do? If we can't take the reactor down then the Inquisitor's plan fails and we're dead anyway. I say we blow it all to hell, better to die here than be cornered and eaten by half-breeds." Falin's voice held a frustrated resignation that he could not help but feel as well. They had no weapons stronger than a hot-shot lasgun other than explosives and they could not hope to use the explosives without causing critical failure in the reactors. Falin's suggestion was unpleasant but possibly inevitable.

Porst eyed the caged Inquisitor greedily. He had no great love for the servants of the Empire. They were irrational at the best of times and wildly fanatical at their worst. He could not see fit to bow and prostrate to the cult of the Emperor either, there were days where he frankly doubted that the Emperor was still even alive. The Lords of Terra be damned for all he cared. He took a deep drag from his cigar and stood from his chair, approaching his caged prize, "My employer implied that you would be motivated to follow us but he neglected to suggest that you would try take us on with a one man," he looked at the servitor, "make that one and a half men. What did you hope to accomplish?. My employer has survived attempts from those who were of greater skill and longer in the tooth with entire armies behind them, let alone one mangy looking servitor."

The Inquisitor whipped his head around to and yelled to his servitor. The servitor looked up when the garbled sounds came from his master but otherwise continued to stare at the swirling colors of the shield, smiling toothily. Servitors were always unnerving to Porst, perhaps because if he were ever to be caught by the authorities he would be made into one, but this one seemed especially wrong to him for some reason. It was too giddy for his liking, "Inquisitor I am not a complete fool. That field negates any sound you might make, though it allows me to speak mine. A lovely variation of the privacy filter don't you think? I've seen my employer make use of compulsions with a word and a gesture to get men to bring about their own undoing. I'm not about to give you the remotest chance of accomplishing that."

He took the silver handle offered to him by one of the half-breeds, "You will sit there and behave till my employer returns or I will be forced to ensure that you are properly plaint. I was given the appropriate means to do so." He pressed a button on the handle and a wave of force shot down from the ceiling upon the Inquisitor driving him to his knees, "You will obey," he pressed the button again, "or I will _make_ you obey."

The Inquisitor's helmet from his face as it cracked under the pressure. A long sliver of metal shrapnel pierced the inner layers of flak to slice his scalp as it burst. A long trickle of blood dripped down the front of his armor from the deep gash along the left side of his face. It would scar, Porst was sure of that.

"Inquisitor fighting it is futile, I've already won," The Inquisitor struggled in the most delightfully futile way. Porst pressed the button again, a damaged section of the Inquisitors armor ruptured and a thin trickle of blood poured down the white of his tabard. Not enough to kill him, but undoubtedly enough to be excruciating. Porst waved his free hand at the large wall of monitors in the front of the room, each showing a different angle of a massive black fleshy hulk with spidery protrusions, "Inquisitor you've already lost. My employer boarded the ship and other than those few of us still in the command spire and catacombs we're already boarded and ready. Your ship in orbit will not pierce our defenses and you are at the mercy of my tender care. Surrender now while you still can."

The Inquisitor responded with a decidedly course hand gesture unbecoming of his breeding and status. Porst pressed the button again, throwing the Inquisitor to his hands and knees. The half-breeds chuckled darkly; pain fitted their warped sense of humor. Porst walked past the ring of half-breeds, resisting the urge to shudder as he did so.

"It was brilliant of you to commit most of your forces to an assault on the munitions depots while you advanced with your retinue. I must confess I'd expected you to have a substantially larger honor guard."

Covag, the commander of the half-breed group in the room screeched loudly and spoke in grumbling gothic, "We will have to remove the other soldiers. Father would not appreciate it if we were to give them the chance to interfere with our duties." Porst rolled his eyes, for all their talk of obeying the father he knew that they were more attracted to the idea of fresh man-flesh than they were to the tasks at hand. The soldiers his employer bred were efficient but at times short slighted and bloodthirsty.

"No Covag I don't think that's wise," Covag's already warped face twisted into an angry leer. Given the chance Porst suspected that they would have just left the Inquisitor alone in the void shields in favor of going after the meat they were allowed to eat.

Gan Zo, one of the mercenaries in Porst's company, turned from his consul, "Sir you might want to reconsider that. The level they're on isn't a crucial one for us, but there is a subsystem that leads to control of the hangar's promethium lines. It would be wise to protect that."

Porst swore, "Very well Covag you will have your fight, but leave half your… men. We might have need of them soon." Somehow Covag's toothy grin was even worse than his glare. Half the group followed Covag as he climbed over the balcony and began to lower himself down the side of the building with his taloned hands and barbed tentacles. They made a raucous mess of opening the blast doors, climbing out, and sealing them again behind them.

"Strange creatures but they do their job," he stared at the Inquisitor's obtrusive countenance behind the shimmering force field, "Don't you look at me as though you're so much better Inquisitor. I know the things you've done. I never ordered a planet fragged just because I didn't like someone on it. Yes, I know about the Exterminatus order. My employer has well connected friends who you've substantially angered. You should be thankful for that, you're worth a great deal more alive than dead," he sighed exaggeratedly, "Though to be fair not connected enough to countermand your orders it would seem. You have access to a substantially important person in the Imperial Navy don't you? Don't bother to try and answer I wouldn't hear you anyway. Yes you must have one. We shall have to deal with him when we're done with you.

He walked in a wide circle round the field that trapped Daul, eyeing the power armor in the way one might examine a particularly feisty animal at the zoo and stopping only when he reached the arco-fagellant. He put his hand on Dorn's shoulder in a mock paternal fashion and chuckled, "I suspect that it's well within my employer's power to alter your servitor, repair him even to his previous state. Would you like that?" He turned to Daul and made a deep mock bow, the thick muscles of his neck bulging, "I wonder if you're little pet dog will bite you as hard when I'm the one who feeds him treats?"

Then as a cold sensation of wrongness swept through the back of his spine he heard a deep grating chuckle in the back of his head, "Tell me Porst does your privacy filter silence my mind as well?"

Porst looked down in horror to the servitor's body went rigid and the barbed electroshock whips sparked into life. The hand clutching the handle floated through the air as the rest of Porst was turned into a bloody mess. Daul sat safely behind the void shield watching the lasfire flare off it as the half-breeds and human jumped into action to counter whirling and screaming whirlwind of death that was Dorn. Daul stood and he laughed.

Danzig had to resist the urge to jump out of his own skin when a firm hand tapped him on the shoulder. Cairn held out his hand and pointed to the spare power cells on his belt then to back his own robes. The Lionheart opened his mouth to ask what Cairn planned to do with them. He closed it just as quickly when he got a look at the Skitarii's expression. Skitarii Thross was standing behind him, quivering with rage, and staring at the their attacker with undisguised malice. The mechandrites hanging from his face were still and the fingers of his prosthetic hands clenched and unclenched so hard that the servos inside them groaned and whined with the pressure. The heretic in front of the was a sin against everything the Skitarii held dear. It showed a perversion of the Omassiah on a level transcending description. Indulging his wishes seemed wise.

"Fine, you want my spare ammunition? You can have it. Whatever you're planning it better damn well work Thross," Cairn gave him a look that could have frozen a sun and contemptuously snatched the power cells out of his hands. Danzig winced as the augmentic fingers squeezed his hand a bit more strongly than was necessary. It had admittedly not been the most graceful thing he could have said at the time to Cairn. But it was still better to anger the clockwork man into action than to allow Falin's harebrained plan to become a necessity.

Cairn's solution was unconventional to say the least. The devotees of the machine god tended to be more blasé about damage to their own bodies in the service of the Omassiah than others would be. When Cairn actually removed his arm at the elbow Danzig was at a loss for words but he supposed it was easier to accept losing an arm when one could simply have it replaced later with a spare. Danzig watched in fascination as Cairn ripped open a side panel of the floor and started to plug wires into the sockets of his detached right arm with all the signs that he considered it to be as mundane as firing a lasgun. Thinner reed-like mechandrites emerged from beneath the beard of tentacles that marked his jaw line. They snaked out and attached wires and circuits in ways entirely beyond his understanding. It was like watching magic being born, fantastic circuit sorcery.

A bright ark of lighting shot out and cracked the wall behind Danzig. The creature, Danzig had long since given up on thinking of it as a man, had started to just lob attacks in the general area of where it suspected the Lionhearts to be. Whatever it was doing with the computers must have been taking up a majority of it's attentions else it was a truly terrible shot.

Not for the first time that day he considered the sanity of the Inqusitor's plan. Presumably the Inquisitor had not known about… whatever this thing was. He would not have come down to fight on the planet itself were escape impossible.

At least he hoped the Inquisitor wouldn't.

The Inquisitor's sense of danger was somewhat warped. The man hadn't even flinched when they were tagged with anti-aircraft fire during planet fall. It was downright disturbing to meet someone who seemed to actually be as cavalier about death as the Lionhearts pretended to be. Laughing in the face of death was a tactical decision by pretending not to fear anything in a large enough group it allowed them to suppress whatever fears they actually had. Doing their jobs even in the face of Kabalite pirates or whatever else might come their way was crucial. The dry and clinical manner in which the Inquisitor was able to either compartmentalize or ignore fear and confusion was astounding. Whatever else could be said about Daul the man's blood was made of ice, "Throne protects the man who got in his way." he muttered.

Cairn shot him a stern glance and Dazig stopped muttering, though his expression was still as sullen. What did the Skitarii expect? Danzig was a soldier. Having to cower in a corner while waiting on someone else to solve his problems was galling. Cairn made an annoyed warbling sound and started to attach the power cells from Danzig's ammunition pouch to the beveled sockets on his arm. Silvery mechandrite tendrils fed into the sockets between the arm and the cell weaving an intricate web of wires.

It was probably some minor techno-heresy to allow Danzig to watch him doing this. Or not, one never knew with the Adeptus Mechanicus. It might be enough for him to assume that Danzig was unaware of the workings of the great machine spirits for the Skitarii to avoid penance or, worse yet, forcing penance on Danzig. The Ad-Mech guarded their sorceries jealously. A penalty for knowing too much forbidden knowledge could force him into a lifetime of service to the Ad-Mech or a lifetime in a penal legion. He squinted his eyes shut just in case.

When the Skitarii let out a whooping cheer he risked opening his eyes only to shut them abruptly as a blinding flash burst from the bundle of wires. Even behind his lids the flash left a brief afterimage on his retina, "Bastard son of a heretic! Skitarii give some warning!" The Skitarii slapped him with his remaining arm and screeched in binary. Danzig muttered a sullen apology.

As he tried to blink the stars out of his eyes he looked at the damage the Skitarii had done. The ground and walls were scorched from where the burning cables had scored them and a scent of cooking meat wafted from the now dead creature. Its body was twisted and stretched by rigor, the blackened cables and smoking offal leaking out its ruptured guts. Cairn, still missing his arm, approached the data terminal beyond the smoking heap of man-flesh apparently unaffected by the sight or the smell. Danzig didn't share his impartiality. The smell of it was vile.

Fahal's sobs had settled to an occasional whimper. Gazan had managed to patch the wound with some synthetic skin and a tourniquet but the stub of an arm still hung limply at his side. His breath was ragged and his eyes were unfocused but that was as much from the painkillers than from the wound itself. Gazan stood up, lifted Fahal to his feet, and helped him to hobble over to Danzig.

Sala'ha whistled and kicked some chunks of meat with his shoe, "The tin man has fangs. What did he do?"

"I don't want to know," Danzig bit his lower lip, "And neither do you. After we debrief I want you forget this ever happened. Purge it from your memory. You didn't see him do it and neither did I for that matter. We've got an Inquisitor within shouting distance most of the day, don't forget about whom we're talking just because you're used to seeing him. If he even begins to suspect us of getting close to an interest in techo-heresy or, throne forbid, the Magos it's more than my life's worth and damn sure more than yours is. Consider this an order, this never happened."

Sala'ha looked incredulous but didn't press the matter farther. Fadir gave a curt nod of agreement. It didn't take much to convince Fadir to mistrust the Inqusitor. Fadir was one of the many Lionhearts who had been loaned to assist the Imperial Guard in retaking Choros XI. The Imperial Guard, doubting the loyalty of the mercenary band, insisted on placing a Commissar with the Lionhearts. They'd balked at his authority but could do little other than submit to his will. Fadir had lost friends who were just as rebellious as he but lacked his talent for not getting caught. His distaste for the omnipotence and lack of oversight of the Commissariat had transferred over to the Inquisition. The few times Fadir had been in a room with Daul he'd spent the entire time eyeing the Inquisitor's pistols. People looked at vipers with more trust.

"Clockwork! Can we get this moving? I want to start the shutdown then get out of here. The locator beacons for pickup won't be of much use if we're still in a rad-soaked area. I want to be there for dust-off," Danzig winced at Falin's tone. Falin was young enough and foolish enough to doubt the wisdom of believing in his own mortality or fallibility. Cairn's success in killing their attacker as had been taken as a personal insult, Danzig bit back venom and rounded on Falin, "Boy stow it, it will be finished when it's finished. And if we leave, and I do mean if, it will be when I say so and if I tell you to stand there from here to judgment day I damn well expect you to stand there and do it. No Falin I don't want to hear it. Stow it and wait."

Even so Danzig could not help but privately agree that they ought to get moving if for no other reason than to get out of the shadow of the creature's body. It was damned unnerving. As he watched the numbers on his chronometer rise his sense of urgency rose along with them.

"How goes the recall of our forces Donat," Sáclair smiled as he downed another glass of aged wine and sipped at the smoke from a pipe fixed to a long hose hanging down from a to an ornate Shisha attached to the back of one of his servitor servants. Being able to attack the city had boosted Sáclair's spirits greatly, as had the aged talbac in the Shisha. The great hall was still in disarray but the servitors and servants had already started to put things to rights. For all his gripes that they ought to see to critical systems first Sáclair seemed to find the re-hanging of every painting in the hall to be greatly cathartic.

Unfortunately for his second in command this boot in morale invariably meant that it would lead to smoke and drink. Donat coughed and winced at the smoke, or at least as close to a wince as Donat could manage. An issue with a cerebral implant had caused a stroke some year's back, permanently paralyzing most of his face. Donat hadn't been an expressive man to begin with so it had taken most of the year for people to notice.

"The troop transports are nearly finished loading sir. It took some doing to get all the ground forces we'd committed to the skirmish, minus those lost in the sortie with Faust's irregulars, as well as a sizeable chunk of the defense forces but barely enough to compensate for the lives lost," Donat looked over the many folds of a long roll of parchment as a servitor scribe hastily scribbled out tactical data in shorthand. The data was also fed into the networked data slates but there was a five second lag and Donat was never one to surrender an edge, "Of the ten squads of Lionhearts we've accounted for eight. Two are dead, tagged by anti-aircraft fire on the descent, four have been safely recalled and two are refusing to leave till they've helped the PDF secure munitions and ammunition on their transports. The PDF has been using Golan class transports for the tanks for centuries but I can hardly blame the Lionhearts for mistrusting the planetborn in knowing the first thing about star flight. Either way we should have everything but the atmospheric flyers running bombing runs out of there and boarded within the next twenty minutes."

"Make it ten, I want to be done with this damned affair. Stop the bombing and prep stage two. Wait? Golan class transports? Are they taking the entire city with them?"

"Only as much of it as they could carry on their backs, the PDF were loath to leave their families behind. We couldn't convince them to come along unless we took the women and children as well. We even had a couple regiments refuse to help at all till we agreed to take the children to the ship on the first transports."

"Where are we going to house them? We're damn near crewed to capacity."

"We were crewed to capacity sir, apparently the black ship managed to hit the environmental controls for the level ten foredeck. Once we've cleared out the bodies that will make suitable temporary quarters. They'll be two or three to a bed but I doubt the families will object," Donat sighed exaggeratedly at Sáclairs incredulous looks, "The Golans aren't filled to capacity just with the Belzafest citizens Captain, as loath as they were to leave their families they were nearly as incensed by the idea of leaving military vehicles in the hands of heretics."

"How well equipped were they Mr. Donat?" Sáclair stood up from his throne and took the scroll offered by Donat, "That seems lightly armed, even for a border colony. I don't recall most fringe worlds having a PDF to speak of but most of them manage to have at least some hydra batteries or a decent core of siege weapons."

"The city had what you'd expect from a miniscule colony in the middle of nowhere with a decent budget but when they left they only took mostly Salamader class and Chimera class transports, a good number of lightly armored sentinel walkers and around couple dozen Leman Russ. They had difficulty in taking any of the more heavily armed or armored from the city before Faust started taking over, they were too slow for the escape."

"Sir the weapons are a boon to be sure but we seem to have forgotten something," Sácomer's wobbling jowls quivered with confusion, "What of the Inquisitor and Danzig? Mr. Donat's report spoke nothing of them. What do we know of their progress in the retreat?"

Donat shifted to face the holoithic monitor's image of the walrus of a man and carefully ignored the look of growing irritation in Sánclair's eyes, "We've found no finite proof that they're alive or dead yet but seeing as how they were tagged by an aircraft battery it's not unreasonable to say that some or all of them are dead."

"I'm not that lucky Mr. Enzo."

"Captain?"

"He's alive, you mark my words. Even if he weren't he designed this plan to run the same if he were alive or dead," Sáclair blew a great ring of smoke, "Hildy is man of commitment if nothing else. No, we continue with the plan. Load everyone back on the ship then charge the forward lance batteries and the fore torpedoes with the high yield atomic charges the Inquisitor brought. I've hated having something that unstable in my cargo bay to begin with. Disgusting things, the man seems determined to bring disgusting things on my beautiful ship. Those torpedoes worst of all, I don't want to even imagine the man that imagined bombs designed specifically to annihilate a hive city. We're going to burn this city to the ground then salt the earth once Kerrigan activates that contemptible machine."

"Sir I really must protest! I cannot believe the Inquisitor really means for you annihilate the city he is presumably inside of." Sácomer looked as surprised as anyone else that he was voicing disagreement with the captain. People who did so did not keep their position long.

Sáclair's tone took on a dangerous edge, "Protest away Mr. Sácomer. You have your orders. Follow them or step down from your position so I can find someone who can do his job without second guessing me." Sácomer flinched but said nothing. We will wait for Kerrigan to finish her task. It won't to us much good to do the job if it's not done properly. We will wait for her to turn on the array and not a second earlier.

Sáclair's drank in the colony of Belzafest below him. He smiled wrily and sang an old Damascan love song to himself as he watched status reports of the ship preparing to fire and possibly to rid him of two great problems. Some times life truly was wonderful. One way or another once the torpedoes were loaded there would be an end.

The void shields encircling Daul dropped once a stray electroshock flail from Dorn overloaded the power supply. Daul hastily issued the command to subdue the servitor. Dorn jerked to a halt and relaxed back into his state of blissful simplicity.

There were times where Daul envied him.

Dorn had made a bloody mess of things, though he only actually killed a handful of the men in the room. Once the furious servitor had been unleashed in their midst every man had grabbed for his side arm and started firing wildly in the direction of the arco-flagellant. Confined spaces and firearms was a recipe for disaster, one that Daul was very grateful for as he stepped over a bullet-riddled corpse.

A groan came from the ground near to the ornate raised seat in the middle of the room. Daul walked over and came face to face once again with Prost. Porst was using what was left of his arm and his one good hand to keep his guts from spilling on to the ground. Daul smiled grimly, "Clotting accelerants. Very expensive but a good way to keep from dying, that's good. I need you alive for what comes next Porst. Are you going to tell me why Faust is here or will I have to take it from you?"

Porst spat bloody phlegm up at Daul's face, "Just do it already Hilder we both know what comes next."

"To the point as always Porst," Daul winced to keep the blood out of his eye, "Very well, I haven't much time anyway."

Porst curled his lip, shouted, "Burn in hell you bastard," and then the started to scream. Taking information from a man's mind psychically was a delicate process. Any mistake would leave the informant crippled, gibbering, simple, or dead. Daul was not worried about mistakes, he tore into Porst's mind ripping anything that looked remotely useful from it and digesting it wholly. Porst's thoughts were crisp and orderly in spite of giving him the distinct sensation of filth on the back of his hands. Porst was putting up a decent fight, tossing up walls of extraneous thoughts and disgusting compulsions in the hopes of distracting or delaying him. Daul's sheer force of will ripped through those walls till he reached a great inky black walled off section of Porst's mind.

A barrier, put up by Faust himself no doubt. Well, it was too late for finesse.

Daul plowed forwards, tearing though the wall and grabbing as many thoughts and ideas as he could before the walls came crashing down, and Porsts head came crashing along with it. Faust had apparently included a failsafe in addition to his walls. Within seconds of Daul breaking the barrier of his thoughts a fist sized section of the back of the thick man's head exploded outward. Daul gagged at the recoil from touching a man's mind in his dying moments and emptied his stomach onto the floor.

He spat to get the taste out of his mouth and looked up at Dorn. The servitor was staring at him with a giddy smile of contentment, "What are you smiling at you vile creature?" he spat again, "Throne that hurt."

He straightened himself and turned to the armored door just beyond the raised chair, "Come Dorn, I say it's time we see what's behind this door that was important enough for Faust's countermeasure." He walked forward at a brisk pace, making no effort to walk around the bodies. Flesh and bone crunched satisfyingly beneath his feet.

The door was easily overridden by the security crystal he'd used on the elevator. It opened with a deep whoosh and a thin fog of cold air wafted out. Daul recognized the table sitting in the middle of the room and the hanging tool setup immediately. An imperial vivisection table was difficult to mistake for anything else, especially one with a live specimen strapped to it.

"It seems the Belzafest colonies were not totally devoid of native life after all Dorn," Daul slowly approached the creature, being careful to keep his distance. Only a fool got too close to an unknown xenos, even one strapped down to a table. Daul prided himself on his knowledge of xenology and xenobiology but could not ever remember hearing tales of this creature.

It had a graceful serenity too it and a dignity in spite of its predicament. Silvery flaps of flesh that might have once been wings were torn to shreds and it's arms showed signs of recent injury at every joint. That made sense; procedure dictated that any creature taken in for vivisection had to have every tendon in its extremities cut to prevent the specimen from contaminating results by jerking around. This was especially important with sentient species. However it seemed that after the use of the automated systems to disable the creatures arms and wings Faust had gone for the old fashioned touch. A small pile of bloodied scalpels and tools sat on the table behind Daul.

"Strange creature this one," Daul said as he approached the table. He eyed the creature with mild suspicion then considered the deep pools of blood on the floor and ceiling, "Pity it's dead."

"Not dead," It raised its head sightly, eyeless sockets filled with gauze looked towards Daul, "Not yet."

Daul's body tensed and he eyed the tools on the table speculatively. Would he have to use them or would he be able to entice the creature into simply telling him why Faust was interested in the creature? For that matter could he find out what the creature even was? The creature solved the problem for him.

"So full of anger. They young are so full of anger. They ask the how but have forgotten what and why. Do you remember what and why?"

The damned creature was delirious, at least it spoke something resembling gothic, "I only seek Faust the one who did this to you. Tell me where he is and what he looks for you and I will promise you revenge."

It sighed, "So young. So angry. You have forgotten. He has remembered. Sometimes the mistake is to forget. Ours was not. Ours was to remain. Ours was to remember. Ours was to fail."

"Where is Faust." Daul started to circle the table impatiently. Recovering reliable intelligence from a victim of torture was imperfect at best. That was one of the main reasons he preferred to take the information from the minds of others without resorting to it. It left even the strongest in fits of delirious useless ranting.

"One finds now when one finds when and how." More damned riddles, it was a small wonder that Faust felt the need to slice into the creatures wings so often.

"What does Faust seek?" The knives kept looking better and better to Daul.

"Knowledge."

"Knowledge of what?" Daul wiped the blood off his face onto the sleeve of his cloak.

"Light and Shadows once fought each other till death woke. The circle was broken and the path led astray. The ones before consumed. The ones after lost. All lost."

Daul ground his teeth, "Where is Faust's ship?"

"Where shadows slept, no shadow remains. Deep, deep down. Only light, only me. Only Kosh."

"Who is Kosh?"

"We are all Kosh."

Daul grabbed the creature by the neck, "You will speak plainly or you will die. Where is Faust? Where is he right now?"

"You are so lost. The young are lost. All are lost. Pain, loss, you lost him. The loss of family is always hard," Daul flinched and slammed down on his mental shields as he felt a thin tendril of awareness snaking its way into his mind. It slowed but he could still feel it wriggling in his head.

Daul saw black, "You dare to intrude in _my_ mind you xenos filth?" His hand closed around the creatures neck and head, cutting off the creatures airflow and crushing It gasped and screeched before collapsing in death. As it died Daul shuddered as a warm paternal feeling washed over him and a single word reverberated though his mind, "forgiven." The creature had truly wanted to die. Far be it from Daul to deny a xenos' death wish but he was no closer to finding the ship.

A great booming crash echoed through the air. For a second Daul feared that Faust had rigged the command center with explosives till he realized that the roaring rush was the equalization in air pressure between the poisonous atmosphere of Belzafest and the oxygen rich atmosphere within the dome. Cairn had done it. Carin disabled the generators. He could only hope that they were picked rescued before Sánclair deployed the powerful explosives upon the city itself. Rescue depended on Kerrigan's speed in fixing the great machine. All that was left was to sit and to wait.

"You may tell the Captian I will activate the machine when I do so and not a minute earlier. This may be his ship but I _am_ the mistress of his machines and his speaker for the Omassiah. He _will_ listen to my wisdom or he will be silent in his ignorance," Sáclair continued to send down frightened looking ensigns to pester the Magos about her progress with the machine. He was clearly eager to wash his hands of the entire bloody affair. His latest messenger was a young boy of around twelve with sandy hair and eyes that were all too interested in all the machines for Kerrigan's liking. Though his voice carried all the sounds of respect his mouth moved over the words as though he was unaccustomed to humility. A common curse of the privileged children of the command staff destined for command positions.

Considering her own relative failures with the machine, Kerrigan was at the verge of conceding defeat herself. Unfortunately she had given her word she would manage to get it working and the value of her word was about the only currency she still had to her name. It would not do to lose that as well as her position on the Oita Forge World. She did truly miss Oita but it would not have done to simply forego what she believed for the benefit of political expediency.

But this task of the machine spirit, _Curse of the Eye_ this damned task was infuriating. It made no sense. It was in none of her texts, none of the manuals of doctrine. None of her ancient books of scripture, by all accounts the damned machine spirit had just made the thing up. It was in none of the coded languages of the machine, it was none of the secret words of worship. It was not a command code in any languages she understood and it was not a reference to any passages of the holy texts of consultation.

Her servants and attendants scurried around, feverishly flipping pages and consulting data slates. Machine Spirits developing these sorts of irregularities was not uncommon, especially in the most venerable and sophisticated of them, but it was always damned frustrating.

1

11

21

1211

111221

312211

13112221

}-Input Code-{

It was there, mocking her and thumbing its nose at her because of how clever it was. She looked back at the boy still standing and looking up at the data terminal of the great machine in wonder, "What are you staring at boy?"

The boy flinched as though scalded, "Nothing mam' its just," the boy hesitated.

"Just what?" She looked at the boy pointedly. She had no patience for any more interruptions from an impetuous child. She even lacked patience for one wearing the crest and silks of Sáclair, one of his nephews no doubt. She was a Magos of the Adeptus Mechancius, not some traveling performer from the ship's markets to do tricks for his amusement. Her mechanical voicebox crackled with rage as she rounded on the child, "Does Sáclair have some _additional_ message that I _need_ to hear or are you just adding your personal opinions on the secrets of the machine?"

"1113213211 Magos."

Everyone in the room froze and looked at the boy. It was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. In a tone of dangerous calm Kerrigan asked, "What do you mean boy?"

"The answer mam' its 1113213211. It's a riddle they use to train children being prepped for the surgeries used to control the _Endless Bounty_. _The Endless Bounty_ she likes riddles mam' and we're trained to know every one of them. You never know when she'll decide that she needs you to prove yourself worthy of her. I'm honestly surprised that none of the people sent down to deliver the message told you," Kerrigan's grip on the delicate tool in her hand was causing the handle to bend and indent under the force of her augmentic grip. The boy, clearly unaware of the dangerous line he was walking continued unabashed, "I suppose they assumed you already knew. People do tend to think you and the Inquisitor know everything, but I suppose nobody but the Emperor can," he bit his cheek, "And honestly mam, uh, that is Magos," he'd caught a sight of the tool in her hand, "You're a little scary."

Kerrigan rounded on the boy, propelled forwards on her mechandrites till she was looming over the now petrified child. She bent down within inches of the child's face, her augmentic features terrifying. She stared straight into his eyes and began to laugh with joy as she lifted the child up into her arms and hugged him, "Child you have just done more than you can possibly imagine."

She turned to her startled attendants, "Well? What are you waiting for? Hurry up! Enter the code and activate the machine. Daul has waited long enough for us to do our jobs." The attendants and lesser priests jumped into action, fiddling with dials, tapping at keyboards, and chanting soothing songs of computation. Kerrigan's cheeks crinkled up into a remnant of a smile, "And for you child I have a special reward."

The boy looked back at her as though he'd been brought to the foot of the chopping block only to be told that not only was he not to be sentenced death they intended to knight him. He sputtered a bit and said, "Reward? You mean to give me a reward?"

"I reward cleverness child, one should always reward cleverness. I intend to make you one of my apprentices," The boy's eyes widened in excitement, "Yes child I do mean that. I will teach you the sorceries of the machine if you prove yourself able. You've already proven to have a deductive mind and a great deal more cleverness than wisdom. I can work with that. Now tell me your name."

"Abbas Sáclair," the boy said in a guarded fashion, as though afraid to admit who he was for fear that the great present would be taken away. It made sense, as the bastard son of one of Nathaniel Sáclair's concubines he would not sit on the great throne himself but would always be constantly being groomed for a position he could never have. Well his role in the Adeptus Mechanicus would be all his. Kerrigan smiled, "Well Abbas, you are now my apprentice. Your first job is to stand silently with me and watch me activate the void shields to protect us from the radiation it will put out."

Abbas stood straight as a board next to her, quivering with pride. Kerrigan shook her head, he would have to learn to curb that enthusiasm or he would go mad from exhaustion. She suppressed a chuckle remembering her own enthusiasm as an apprentice whilst activating the commands that caused a domed void shield to flicker into life around the great double-headed eagle sitting on the circle of obsidian in the center of the room. It was magnificent to see the machine in action, there were so few teleporters in active service on any ship smaller than an lunar class ship, powering them simply took too much energy for the smaller ships to handle. Activating the one on the _Endless Bounty_ had taken altering the generators to output more energy enough that it bordered techo-heresy. Were it not in the service of activating such a wondrous machine Kerrigan would have been loath to do it at all. Now that the machine sang and hummed with activation she smiled to herself as the chorus of singers chanted in melodic tones of binary.

She typed on the data pad and entered the crystal with the information about the sub-dermal locator beacons inserted into all of the Lionhearts as well as Daul. They appeared as bright orange dots flashing on her screen. Most of the dots were on ships heading back to the _Endless Bounty _but there were two clusters of orange dots still in the city. She focused the great machine on those two clusters of dots and thumbed the runes of activation. The room filled with a great hum of the machine and a bright flash of light in the center of the room on top of the obsidian slab.

Two rather haggard and war worn looking groups of Lionhearts appeared in the center of the room blinking in astonishment next to a substantially less surprised but no less relieved looking Daul. Dorn, as always, just looked clueless. Falin pulled up his gun in surprise and fired wildly at the shield. Danzig batted his gun away and screeched at him. Kerrigan smiled, the void shield would have protected her but she appreciated the effort. She tapped on the intercom, "Is it safe to let you out or are you going to shoot at me again?" She didn't wait for a response before thumbing the deactivation rune for the shields, "You're welcome by the way."

Daul batted away the frustrated motherings of Cairn over his torn eye and approached Kerrigan, "The beautiful Magos Frist, your timing is impeccable as always. May I bother you to activate a channel to the bridge? I have need of you again," Kerrigan put her hands on her hips and her face crinkled in a smile, "Magos I would love nothing more than to exchange our usual pleasantries but this is urgent. Faust has another ship."

Kerrigan's joking demeanor dropped entirely she shrieked for her attendants, "Holonet-link! Now!" She turned back to Daul as two of her attendants rushed forwards pushing a thin sheet of black glass

"One burning thing after another I swear," she muttered darkly as she eyed the look of undisguised hero worship Abbas was eying the Lionhearts with.

The sheet of black glass flickered and the image of Sánclair's face appeared. He eyed Daul with mild surprise and then smiled, "So _that's_ what Kerrigan's pet project does! On my ship? There is one installed on my ship. How wonderful. Oh Hildy I take back all the nasty things I said about what you bring onto my ship. It isn't even the anniversary of my ascension. "

"Captain, now is not the time," Daul tried not to enjoy cutting Sánclair off, "Faust has a ship. I don't know how or what type but we need to blast it to hell before it can take off."

"Another ship? Hildy you do need to fire whoever is in charge of getting your military intelligence on Faust. He truly is dreadful at his job," Sáclair's ruff had been torn in the earlier battle but he still managed an over dignified flourish of his silken coat and lace cuffs before continuing, "Yes Hildy I will fix this problem for you but I want you to resolve the issue of our four fingered friend and his hounds in my brig."

Daul bit his tongue keeping his retort in check, now was no time for a fight, "Fine. Whatever you wish just blow that ship to hell."

"I promise to do everything in my power to kill it," Sáclair ended the connection on his end and watched the image of Daul wink out of existence. The Inquisitor really did have Horus' luck, a teleporter of all things. Still if the Inquisitor intended to keep the teleportation machine it would mean better business for the bounty. Provided of course, the Inquisitor ever allowed the _Endless Bounty_ to go back to work. Damned oath of service and damned honor keep him. He looked up to Donat, "Well? How much of a charge have we built up in the forward lances?"

"More than enough now that the shields are down sir."

"Well then there's no use in waiting, fire, fire everything we have."

"Of course sir."

Bright streams of laser fire burst from the forward lance batteries, crashing into the city and cracking the already pockmarked and damaged dome. The force ruptured the top of it into shambles. The modified atomics rocketed down into the colony and burst in bright plumes of fission and death. The bounty fired off four salvoes of laser fire and atomics. The skies of Belzafest boiled and churned around the explosion like the eye of some great storm.

"Tell the Inquisitor that, once again, I've cleaned up his mess Sácomer. And do try to emphasize that I would prefer he not make a habit of it." Sáclair stood up and stretched, "I daresay it will be nice to get some sleep after all this."

"Sir you're going to want to interface with the ship," Donat was looking over the readouts from the servitors scribes again, "You're going to want to do it now sir."

Donat, never one for joking or exaggeration had gone white as a sheet, "If you insist Donat, but I must sleep eventually." He nonetheless did grab for the silvery filament as fast as possible and fix it into the socket. Who was he, after all, to discourage his crew from helping him do exactly what he wished to be doing. Throne it was glorious to be part of the ship, to be large. It was fantastic. He throttled down on his emotions and soaked in the information around him, not just the sensations of the ships systems.

There was the space around him, the minefield in the distance, and beneath the planet. The city was a swirling mass of atomic death. Nothing could have survived. No that was wrong. The same sense of deep nothingness, the missing space, the absence of matter was sitting in the middle of the explosion. An inky black nothingness the size of an apocalypse class cruiser rouse out of the mass of rolling clouds and took to the stars.

Throne almighty help him he had to fight that, he could not let it escape. Damn his confidence and damn his word. Burn it all, it would have to do. It was suicide but it would have to do. He could only hope this would earn him his place with his predecessors or kill him and his ship in the process and resolve the issue to everyone's satisfaction, "Get the sanctioned psychers attached to the gun batteries, as many as were left over from the last try. No more, we can't risk more and I doubt they'll have issue finding the damn thing."

It was as nightmarish and alien as any ship Sáclair had ever seen, almost tyranid-like in its architecture. In addition to the back spidery spines that had flared from the smaller ship its crablike midsection fed into a thick section of mottled fleshy tentacles that circled what Sánclair could only assume was a weapons array of some sort. It sat in the distance, flexing its tentacles and spines like some great predator of the ancient seas of Terra. Sánclair swung the bounty round and gave the order to fire, but the weapons of the bounty seemed infinitesimally too small to damage that the great ship. The ship apparently agreed, it ignored the efforts of the _Endless Bounty _entirely. It loomed in the distance, impassively taking what the bounty tossed at it. It slowly turned at faced the planet. The mass of the great tentacles hanging from its spidery form pulled away from its front and Sáclair registered a monumental buildup in energy.

He flinched and tried to fly away to a safe distance but was a second too late. A stream of bright orange energy swept towards the _Endless Bounty_. Sáclair gritted his teeth and waited for the incoming embrace of death. It never came. The wave of energy swept past the _Endless Bounty_ entirely and collided with the planet of Belzafest. The sweeping waves of unease that Sánclair associated with the plunging into warp space started to overcome Sánclair. He checked the condition of the ship's Gellar Fields just to make sure, though he doubted they would do any good in protecting the ship from whatever warp devilry Faust had planned.

Sácomer's face hardened and he yelled to Sánclair, "Sir, we must move destroy that thing, that monstrosity."

"Mr. Sácomer?" Donat's emotionless face eyed Sácomer, "What do you mean for us to do?"

"We did ram the last one sir." Sáclair bit back the urge to shout. It would be like a minnow trying to ram a swordfish. The glowing orange energy fired by the ship had bored deep into the planet and had caused great cracks and fissures to form at it slowly imploded on itself. The astropathic choir started to scream and their handlers had to quickly intervene to stop them from opening their own veins. Sánclair watched in horror as a great rift in space opened where the planet used to be. A thought occurred to Sánclair and he activated the hololithic connection to Kerrigan's workshop a second time, "Inquisitor. I need your help."

Daul, half covered by the powered armor the Skitarii had been aiding him in removing popped into the view nearly instantly. Apparently he understood how desperate Sáclair was to admit he needed anyone else's help, least of all Daul's. "Yes Captain what do you need?" the Inquisitor batted Gazan away from the half finished stitches covering the left side of the his face and tried to ignore the Skitarii as he proceeded to remove his left pauldron.

"Faust is known for his forays into xenotech but what of the other heretical arts. Has he been known to consort with the forces of Chaos?" Sánclair deeply hoped he was misinterpreting the facts. He would give near anything to be misinterpreting the facts.

The Inquisitor flinched as Gazan pulled the stitches tighter on his face than they necessarily needed to be. He muttered something that sounded distinctly like sadist. Gazan ignored him entirely and saw to his forehead, "We damn well can supect it now. It feels as though I'm being spit in half. Captain," he winced in pain, "shoot the damn ship, ram it, plead with it, but do not let it get away," the Inquisitor doubled over and the astropathic choir wailed again in horror and pain, "I need, I need to sit down."

The hololith flickered out even as Sáclair yelled, "No Inquisitor wait!" Sáclair swore and turned to the only person who didn't seem to be in a state of panic, Zorn Calven. The Navigator stood at the head of the navigators staring out at the rift in mild amusement, "Navigator would you care to shed some light on what is going on?"

The navigator slowly rubbed his pale skeletal fingers together and clicked his tongue on his teeth. He giggled slightly as he said, "It's a flow, a current… no, not a current. It's a tidal wave of warp along which to travel, the idea is twisted, brilliant but evil. The mass of the planet is being used to tear a path to wherever it is that the other ship is going. Wherever that is must be astronomically far away."

"How far?"

"Farther than I can calculate sir," Navigator Calven seemed excited by the prospect, "Perhaps farther than mankind has ever been."

The massive ship started to rocket forwards at surprising speed towards the tear. As did the _Endless Bounty_ much to the surprise and chagrin of it's Captain. The rift was pulling at the bounty with surprising force. Navigator Calven might think it a tidal wave but to Sáclair it couldn't help but feel like quicksand. Moving away from the rift felt sluggish and painful. It tore at the ship's hull and engines and only slowed their descent into the rift. Sáclair closed his eyes and tired to ignore nagging voice of caution in his head as he drove the bounty through the rift right after Faust's ship, "It looks like we're going on an adventure lads."

The deep plunging sense of driving the ship through the rift was exactly the same as normal warp travel, but never in his life had he experienced as turbulent of a warp flow in his life. It was rushing, churning, frothing, and seething mass of nothingness lined with fangs. Simply keeping up with the massive shape of Faust's ship in the distance was straining the engines beyond what was safe to use within warp-space. It was something neither Sácair nor any of his predecessors could remember experiencing. He eyed the rear weapons of the ship warily, fearful that they could fire on him at any moment. Fearful that he could not fire back without compromising the power supplies to the Gellar Fields, he was full of nervous energy. So focused was he on the ship in front that he did not notice the danger approaching from behind.

Sácomer screamed, "The mines sir! Deactivate the shields! The mines!" but it was too late. Pulled in by the inexorable gravity of the rift a stream of Oita make mines streamed towards the bounty. Sáclair screamed as they burst near the _Endless Bounty_ tearing into her engines and crippling them. Reports flowed in from all sections of hull breaches and isolated failures in the Gellar Fields. Sáclair listened to the reports of system damages and casualties through a haze as he watched Faust's ship disappear into the distance. He ignored the sounds around him and consigning himself to the shame of failure as the _Endless Bounty_ drifted helplessly in the warp. He wondered if his ancestors would ever let him forget the shame.

All reviews are welcome. I love negative reviews as much as positive ones.


	6. Chapter 6

Daul would have gladly slept for a week given the opportunity. His entire body ached. A patchwork of cuts and abrasions covered what little of his body was not bruised. Cairn had all but carried him to his quarters and forced him into bed after they'd managed to strip him out of his armor. His beloved power armor was now little more than scrap.

When Cairn shuffled the Daul towards the inquisitor's chambers Daul had protested vehemently that he could not sleep yet. The security forces onboard would need his expertise in repelling warp entities. Throne forbid they should be boarded by a full Demonic incursion while he slept. The _Endless Bounty_ had been buffeted and bucked around in the warp for a good twenty minutes before they were able to get enough power from the generators to break back into real-space. Twenty minutes was more than long enough for possession and daemonic incursion. There had been scattered cases of sanctioned psychics and crewmen being overtaken by murderous entities but if the initial security reports were to be trusted the immediate threat had been contained.

He needed to screen the entire population of the Bounty for possible demonic possessions. He needed to debrief Sáclair. He needed to do any one of a million tasks running though his head. He very well might not seep that week let alone that month. He could do it, he may die from stimulant overdose but he could do it.

Cairn had listened to none of the Inquisitors excuses. When Daul had tried to lift himself out of bed the Skitarii had simply held him down with his remaining arm and administered a sedative with one of his mechandrites. It was a weaker sedative that Daul would have chosen to use normally, not one that would prevent dreams. Daul was so injured that anything stronger would have been risky.

"Let me up you over-important toaster," he muttered groggily as his vision swam.

The feeling of dread he always associated with falling asleep washed over him and he suddenly felt blackness and the world of dreams. His first dreams were inconsequential nonsense. It was to be expected. His nightmare was always the last of his dreams. Daul walked the shadowed twisting corridors of his dreams staring into bizarre tableaus of near reality, a confusing but comforting nonsense of flight and fancy. He was a novice under the care of Inquisitor Gaal being praised for his research of Imperial history. He was a soldier watching the retaking of Choros IX. He was a proud father staring at a newborn child dreaming of a large family in his estates on Metzik. He was standing next to the Primarchs watching the glories of the great Crusade. He was a young man feeling the warmth of a woman's flesh for the first time. Dreams spun at random, confusing him with their abrupt changes and shifting geometries, truth, fiction and memory churning without cause.

He tried clear his head mind. He wanted to make sense of the memories and fantasies or find an exit. He pleaded with himself as he felt his body shrink and stretch till it was child sized "Damn, not the dream, please don't be the damned dream," but he was unmistakably in the house of his childhood but not the scene of his nightmare. He stood in the kitchen opposite his grandfather watching him carve a bit of wood. He bit his lip and stared at Bast Hilder's friendly face. It had been too long since he thought of that face. It was decidedly odd that his grandfather was in the kitchen but not his mother. The dream usually started with his mother… three years later come to think of it. Bast Hilder died long before his father. The lung disease jokingly called the venerable miner's breath took most men from the mines. It probably would have taken Daul if he'd stayed. Bast stared at him over a set of spectacles and took the pipe from his mouth, tapping the ashes into a stone pot at his side, "Child if you mean to keep staring at me like I've just kicked your pet dog I plan to take it personal."

Daul stuttered, "No it's just I was expecting… It's nothing really Opa," the Metizk world slipped off his tongue for the first time in years not said as a scream in a nightmare, "I'm just surprised to see you. That's all."

"Surprised not to see my damned fool of a son you mean," Bast Hilder packed his pipe with Talbac, Daul's grandfather always had the best Talbac, and rooted around in his pockets for match. He looked up at Daul's terrified expression, "Oh calm yourself boy. No damned fool is going to lay a hand on my grandson. Took me long enough to find what the idiot has been up to but I set things to right. You can see for yourself. Get me those matches off the sideboard would you?"

Daul turned and walked to the sideboard. He grabbed the matches from where they always were on the sideboard next to the change jar. Or rather they were on the side board next to where the change jar had always been. In place of the change jar was a small clear glass aquarium that held a single occupant. Daul's twisted monster of a father sat sullenly on top of a bed of cottonballs and sawdust muttering murderously. When he noticed his son he jumped up, waving his arms and screaming threats. His entire body shook from the effort of waving his arms and his voice was entirely too high to understand a word of it. Daul turned to his grandfather, "Opa how did you… how did you do that?"

"You listen with your ears but never think with your head boy. Didn't I always tell you that you need to shrink your fears down to as big as they deserve to be? My boy's been dead going on a century, shame that, but what he became died with him. He doesn't deserve more of you than that box he's in right now. Don't start thinking otherwise," he looked at the box in Daul's hand, "Now are you going to bring me those matches or are you going to make an old man stand up."

Daul rushed over and handed the cardboard box over to the Hilder patriarch. Bast took the box with hands calloused from years working in the mines and shook it next to his ear before taking out a match and striking it. He lit his pipe and puffed at it contentedly before picking up his knife and whittling the bit of wood into an armored shape vaguely resembling Daul's grown up self, "Sit down child you're hopping about like a startled toad."

Daul sat down with on the stool behind him with such force that it knocked the wind out of him. He tried to articulate exactly how he was feeling into words but all he managed to do was sob a bit and say, "I miss them Opa. I miss them so much. Especially now that… now that he's dead," Daul choked on the name of his most recent loss.

"Can you not bring yourself to say his name child? There's no sense in dishonoring family by forgetting them. He's gone but as long as you love him he's still with you," His face crinked with a kind smile, "Though I'll admit having someone watching over you from beyond is less comfort than being able to hold them in your arms and your eyes, even if they are still in your heart."

"It's just too soon Opa. It just still hurts," Daul felt Bast's hand ruffling his hair in the way he used to hate as a boy, "It never seems to go away. It won't go away not till he's dead," his voice brimmed with hatred, "Faust will die. Faust will die by my hands. I'll make Faust feel the pain he felt, die the death he died. He deserves it. He needs to die."

"That well may be child, that well may be," His grandfather walked over to the kitchen table and started fipping through the pages of a lovewarn copy of the "The Teachings of Sebastian Thor" that his mother always had around till he reached his favorite passage, "Revenge is a task that hurts everyone and helps none. Justice is riteous but revenge will always be torn by spite. Rage is the weapon of the enemy. The enemy will drive you and use you through your rage. He will seek to make you into him. Seek not revenge but find justice for it is in reason and righteousness that we stand in the Emperor's light." He chuckled, "Don't give me that sullen look boy. You well may have to kill him but if you do make sure you do it for the right reasons. Now let's stop talking about this unpleasantness. I've got a century of catching up to do and a whole mess of common sense what needs to get beaten into you again."

It was wonderful to have a conversation with the man again, even if it wasn't real. Daul sat, and listened, and dreamed without fear for the first time since he was a child. When he was woken by Cairn ten hours later he felt calmer and more refreshed than he could not remember ever having been. It was just as well. Cairn's news was decidedly unpleasant. Unpleasant enough to forget that Bast's voice from his dreams was not as he remembered it.

* * *

The wine glass flew half the distance of the great hall before it shattered on the floor. None of the servants bothered clean it. They scurried about righting statues and freeing servitors from the rubble. The Hall had taken the worst of its damage to non-critical systems but the damaged pride of Sáclair was mirrored every pane of shattered glass and broken chandelier. The Captain had not slept in thirty-six hours and refused to leave his post for anything, even to sleep. Even his concubines had retreated to their quarters for fear of his mood. The Captian sat on his throne brooding, eying the court beneath him, and shooting murderous looks at anyone foolish enough to make eye-contact.

Everyone capable of assisting with repairs had been enlisted to do. Even the nobility was making a show of scurrying around with reports and data-slates. The queue to his throne was blissfully empty of crewmen. Nobody wanted to give Sáclair even the vague impression they were slacking. His penalties for doing so were decidedly unpleasant. Sáclair had sent the ship's assistant Quartermaster to oversee the servitors clearing bodies from the hold after he showed up late for duty by two minutes.

The only people in the great hall not spending every waking moment appearing as busy as possible were those unlucky few who reported directly to Sáclair. Hakam Danzig, Donat Enzo, Étienne Sácomer, Zorn Calven, Anoosheh Osma and Faest Nor stood in a semi-circle in front of Sánclair. Even the normally jolly Sácomer was in ill humor. He stood sagging from the spidery legs of his agumentic walking frame like a deflated balloon, wobbling slightly with the effort of staying awake. Sácomer had taken the loss nearly as hard as the captain. Sánclair spoke in clipped businesslike tones even as a servant appeared with a fresh glass of wine, "Gentlemen we have all been working non-stop for the better part of the past day. I understand that the past hours have been trying. However, if someone does not at the very least tell me where in the blazes we are I will be irked beyond measure," the jovial tone and forced smile did not match the furious look in his eyes, "It would be unwise to allow that."

Sánclair downed the new glass of wine in a single swig and chucked it into the distance where it cracked on the ground with a satisfying smash. It wasn't fair of him to take out his frustrations on the crew but the voices of his ancestors were in a state of turmoil. The collective spoke to him in a passive state generally, offering words of wisdom at times and sharing their memories when asked. Since the _Endless Bounty_ had exited the warp the voices of his ancestors had gone from a calming voice in the distance to an impossible mess of gibbering words and shouting matches. Those who came before him were terrified, and not without reason. He was fine with their fear but he could have done without their arguments. More than once he'd found himself to be shouting for silence in an already silent room, his attendants eying him with uncomprehending fear. Alcohol dimmed their voices some, and work distracted his mind from their quarrellings. He tapped his hand on the arm of his throne, eying the navigator in annoyance and speaking in a voice dripping with cruel sanctimony, "Well esteemed Navigator? What light does your house have to shed on this situation? You of the most _clever_ house of navigators."

Calven ignored Sáclair's rudeness entirely, "As my Captain will recall I did warn him that the warp tunnel could lead anywhere. As my Captain was told it was beyond the knowledge of any navigator how such a feat could be done or to what purpose it might serve," Sáclair could not help but think of the Navigator's ornate feathered cloak was looking increasingly flammable with each word, "As my Captain will remember it was only the fast thinking of Setvan Illrich of the Navigators that we were able to get enough power from the reactors to escape the warp at all. My captain knows that Navigators Illrich and Zain are overseeing the astropathic choir to seek solutions. My Captain is a _very_ capable man so he has no need for me to remind him of what he already knows."

"So stop wasting my time by talking about what the Captain already knows you translucent, three eyed, toad," Sáclair cracked a smile. Danzig, bandaged and bruised was as loyal to and protective of Sáclair as ever. Sáclair would not have put it past Danzig to punch the Navigator in his third eye given the chance. The sanctimony of the Navigators never sat well with the Lionhearts, "If you've got something new to say then say it otherwise I've been beaten, shot at, stabbed, and burned in the past twelve hours. Every minute you're spending with this infuriating game of words and meanings is a minute me and him," he pointed to Faest, "aren't down in the damned hospital making sure my men pull through."

Zorn eyed Danzig loftily but said nothing in response, not to avoid angering the soldier, the navigator knew too well the Lionheart would never willingly allow harm to befall an navigator, but for fear of the Chief Docere Medicus. Medicus Nor would stitch Zorn's mouth shut if he believed that it would speed up his ability to go back to his beloved hospital a second faster. The navigator curled his lip but continued as though there had been no interruption, "In short Captain we are somewhere beyond the galactic rim. We cannot find any consistency to the stellar geography matching the areas mapped by the navigators."

Donat blinked, "What of the Astronomicon? Has the choir recovered from the unpleasantness and found it yet?" Sáclair sighed, Donat was a faithful second in command but an unimaginative one. The idea that there were great sections of uncharted space beyond the light and grace of the Emperor was something that no amount of proof could convince Donat to believe. He would obey but he would not believe. Sácomer required far less proof of their circumstances. Sáclair had never taken the larger man for a fatalist but Sácomer's blind panic was obvious. It wasn't beyond belief, Sácomer had a keen mind in spite of his foppishness and blubber.

"Lieutenant Enzo if you insist upon living in a fantasy world I cannot be blamed for your ignorance," there should be a law against the level of smugness in the Navigator's voice. He would have to confer with the ancestors later to see if there is an existing law he might repurpose to that end, "We are beyond the limit of the Astronomicon's light. If that means we are simply at the extremes of where Solar Macharius' armies refused to go or are in an entirely new galaxy remains to be seen. The Astropaths had to be forcibly stopped from killing themselves from the shock of losing its light. I suspect we well may have to kill the ones who have gone mad from the shock anyway. This is not some spatial anomaly we can simply coast through. We are truly in the rough," his voice became clinical and he pulled out a small hololithic projector and held it up. A small swirling mass of stars appeared with a red dot at the galactic southern edge, "We estimate that this is our place in the galaxy but honestly any stellar cartography we have of the area will be an estimate at best. On the bright side I am reasonably convinced that the ship we were chasing was hit by a group of mines soon after we were. I cannot say for certain if they were tossed out of the warp as well, but it seems plausible. That we were not tossed out into the coronal mass of a sun is nothing but luck, perhaps they were not so lucky."

"Wishful thinking accomplishes nothing navigator," Sáclair had no patience for optimism at the moment, "Do we have any way of navigating in the warp?"

"To where sir? I can direct this ship through the flows of the warp but I must have an idea of to where I am to go. The Astronomicon provides a point of reference off of which the navigators judge distance and location," the navigator zoomed out the image of unfamiliar stars as far as it would go, "without a point of reference I am just reaching in the dark. I can take us into the warp and out of the warp but we would be sailing blindly. We have nowhere to go to or from. We will at least have little difficulty in getting to there, the warp currents seem especially mild in this region which is some small comfort."

Sáclair motioned for another glass of wine, the servant came with a silver pitcher filled to the brim. Sáclair raised an eyebrow and motioned the servant closer. The servant, a particularly frightened looking girl wearing the livery of his household approached him nervously. She carefully avoided eye contact, "Yes sir? Do you need anything else?"

"This is not a glass," he lifted the sliver pitcher up to eye level, "Where is my glass?"

"The Lady Sáclair told us we weren't to bring out any more glasses sir. The lady told us that if you asked we were to pass on a message," Her face turned beet red, "The Lady said to say 'If my fool of a husband thinks he can destroy all the good crystal just because he's in a tiff then he can damn well forget it. He'll drink from the pitcher and like it or neither I nor his concubines will warm his bed for at least a year." She blanched and clarified as she nervously rubbed her hands in her apron, "She said that sir, not me! I'd never talk about my betters like that. I know my place."

"Calm yourself girl," Sáclair chuckled, "I know my wife's words and temper better than any man. I have no doubt she said it and meant it. Do be so kind as to pass a message back to her for me. For her and for no others."

The girl nodded wide-eyed, "If you want me to sir, I will sir."

"Good," He leaned in and whispered, "Love makes a man do foolish things but it does not make a man a fool. Your good crystal is safe. If I am a fool of a man I am still _your_ fool of a man and I expect to see both you and my concubines in my chambers tonight. You may be mistress of my heart but I will remind you why I am the master of our bed." The girl blushed a florescent red and bowed herself away as fast as she could, clearly eager not to give him the opportunity to elaborate.

As she lifted up to the servant's entrance a grav hook he yelled, "And I want to see her in pearls!" at her retreating back. The girl blushed with her entire body, she must be new to his wife's staff. Not many of the serving girls who worked for her stayed modest long. Her temper and frankness robbed them of that. His wife's words had brightened his humor, as had the prospect of the night to come. The Lady Sáclair only bothered to threaten withholding her company if she had something equally entertaining in mind to reward him for making the proper decision. The officers looked at him with of mixed expressions of amusement and consternation. Generations of outlandish behavior from house Sáclair had since rendered the shock value of his words moot for the officers.

"Spoilsports," Saclair muttered a stage whisper. The officers all chuckled dryly. He rolled his eyes downed his wine and remembered why he had been sullen in the first place, "Medicus how many did we lose?"

"It's difficult to say, most of the damage was limited to the aft sections which were already mostly abandoned after the first fight with the smaller ship. The major population centers are in the mid decks away from the engines for obvious reasons. There were a number of fatalities but not enough to leave us understaffed in any critical areas. We lost a lot of dock workers in the decompression, not all of them were lucky enough to have attached the grav hooks to keep them on the ship. Fewer still had their survival masks in reach," he looked over his scrolls, "That we haven't instituted carrying one of those at all times for the dock workers is nothing short of criminal. We really must fix that."

Sáclair nodded, "Consider it done. The workers will complain but I suspect their supervisors flogging those who don't comply will change their tune. I'll mention it to the chief of the Tech-priest ensigneers once Kerrigan lets him go. I would have called him for this meeting for you to tell him yourself but I'm not fool enough to get between the Adeptus Mechanicus and fixing a hull breach."

"Odd that he's not here," muttered Calven.

"Chief Ensigneer Iino and Father Al'Ashir are seeing to duties that obviously take precedence at the moment. I we expect the Admech to stop their devotions to the machine any more than I can expect the church to stop their devotions to the Emperor," Osma's deep grumble ground out its disapproval. Osma did not like the navigator and made no secret of his dislike, "And considering it's me who'll have to oversee any floggings I assure you we are more than capable of seeing punishment going to those who deserve it." He let 'deserve it' hang in the air, pointedly staring at the navigator, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind exactly who deserved it in his eyes. Calven stared back murderously. Osma had been one of the few in support of allowing the Inquisitor to interrogate navigators. The chief's belief that all are subject to the rule of law was categorical and unmoving.

"I doubt floggings will be necessary, we lost half our dock workers due to asphyxiation in plain view of the rest. Even then they had to float there hanging from the grav hooks in open space till we could get a patch on the doors. The dockworkers are going to sleep wearing those damn things for the next year if I don't miss my guess," he pulled out a pen and made a note on the page, " I might too for that matter provided we don't get someone in to scrub the smell out of the main halls soon. One of the sewage lines ruptured along the main drag. It's not a medical emergency yet but it will be if we don't disinfect the entire drag stem to stern before disease breaks out. The last thing we need right now is a cholera epidemic."

"I'd actually like to get the Belzafest survivors working on that sir," Donat's face showed no signs of restlessness but he was shifting nervously on his feet and looking down at a pocket watch every other moment, "The main drag is well guarded in case any of them try anything funny and it might do us some good to have the crew seeing them pitching in their share. Tempers are high, the last thing we want is for the crew to start thinking of the Belzafesters as spoiled or lazy. We have enough issues without starting a mutiny against a group of trained soldiers, even if they are from a backwater PDF regiment." He looked back down to his watch again.

"Am I keeping you from an appointment Mr. Enzo? One with someone more important?" Sáclair snatched the pocket watch out of Mr. Enzo's hand and looked at it. It was a heavy watch of Sezan designs, infinitely less fashionable than even one of Damascan make and dented in several places. I wasn't even gold or silver but one of the silvery metallic alloys favored by the crew for its durability rather than its style. In fact the only remarkable part of the watch was the inscription on the inside "So that you'll never be late no matter where you are" written inside in a child's messy hand underneath a portrait of a round cheeked blond child.

Donat responded in a voice of measured calm as he snatched back his watch, "Yes, Captain. As a matter of fact misters Danzig and Nor are not the only ones who have an immediate interest in being in hospital."

It was sometimes easy to forget that Donat had a daughter. He spoke so little of his family. It wasn't as though Sáclair had never met the man's wife and child. They were regularly in his court on business but they seemed to have developed Donat's talent for disappearing in plain view. Donat did not ever speak of emotion or love but Sáclair had never know the man to miss anything that he promised her he would attend at the Escole-Imperailis most of the officers sent their children to. Sáclair could not claim the same but he had five daughters and ten bastard sons, they couldn't expect him to show up for everything. Come to think of it he believed one of his bastard children was romantically interested in the girl. It was a pity really. Donat would never consent to a marriage between his daughter and a bastard. He would have to arrange someone suitable for the boy else there could be trouble on the horizon.

"Calm yourself Donny, we're all not at our best," Chief of Security Osma's stroked his hand through the messily groomed braids of beard handing from his face. The lower breed Damascan's had never been truly purged of their pagan ways but Osma's backwardness was a boon really. He was substantially less threatening for the crew to approach than his predecessor and did not judge guilt or innocence based upon breeding alone. Minor pagan irregularities were commonplace in the cult of the Emperor and few could be credited with true heresy. Osma was not of high birth but his meticulous successes made the nobility of the bounty willing to overlook that slight flaw of character. Or rather it did till they themselves were brought up on charges. Sáclair tolerated the pillbox hat and ceremonial knife worn in addition to the standard uniform of the Security Chief in the same way he tolerated the Lionhearts custom of calls to prayer six times a day over the intercoms. They were minor concessions that allowed the ship to function. He was a clever and capable head of security but his oratory was like close to listening to someone gargle rocks, "I'll have to insist that there is an additional security presence around the Belzafesters till the Inquisitor has had a chance to screen them for heretics. Oh don't give me that look Lieutenant, you can still have them cleaning the main drag, but I'm not going to risk any one of them going south and starting a fight or some damned fool heretic committing sabotage. It might to have some 'off duty' Lionhearts wandering around the ship as well, strapped with their side arms of course. I don't want them to do much other than be there just in case. We're not at martial law yet."

"It we might be soon," Sácomer kicked a foot in the air as he talked. His many chins wobbled as his beady eyes looked determinedly everywhere but at Sáclair, "Sir, we lost a good portion of our food supply in the attacks, grain, meat, most of the non-perishables. We even lost a good number of the livestock we'd been using for milk and eggs. If we start rationing now we'll probably be able to make it last a month in relative comfort, two if we tighten our belts," belt tightening was said with the same gravitas as one might refer to execution, "That's the least of our worries however. Mr. Enzo would you be so kind?"

"Of course Mr. Sácomer. Captian if I may?" he waved at the massive holo-lithic projector in the center of the great hall. Sánclair nodded and Donat pulled out a small remote. A massive glowing green rendering of the _Endless Bounty_ appeared hovering in the middle of the room. The officers below stopped scurrying around to stare at it. Even their fear of extra duties would not stop them the chance to speculate about the conversations of the Captain. By this time the next day half the crew would speak of the conversations prompting the use of the great hololith though none of them could hear through Sáclair's privacy filters. Not that any of the crew would let a little thing like the truth get in the way of good gossip.

Donat twisted a knob on the remote and the image started to divide into a isometric cross section by deck. Areas of the ship damaged in the fight glowed red, including a number of major systems that made Sáclair cringe, "The sewage line bursting was only the tip of the iceberg. We lost most of our water reserves when the cisterns burst. We even if the water reclamation systems were to go nonstop for the next two days we could only force a weeks worth of water out of them. Less than that considering how many wounded we have. We need water, and soon. I've started dispatching the flight wings to search the surrounding area." Water, of course it had to be water. A body could go for days, or even weeks if deprived from food but a crew without adequate water would mutiny fast as anything Sáclair could imagine.

"We're looking for any viable planets or asteroids with something resembling potable water but we aren't very hopeful at the moment. Even if we were to find a source of it we'd need to run it through the filtration systems which, as has already been mentioned, aren't running at full capacity," Donat stared disapprovingly as Sáclair drank deeply from the wine pitcher. Donat was welcome to stuff his disapproval in the darkest pits of himself and keep it there, "I'd suggest a temporary hold on alcohol rations to the crew. We can't hope to slow down the black market but it would be best to avoid the problems that come with drunkenness in addition to those that come with lack of food and water."

Osma grunted his approval. He was astoundingly puritanical in his dislike of alcohol, another of his holdovers from the old Damascan tradition. Osma always made a point of pretending not to notice that Sáclair drank and generally excused himself from functions where imbibing alcohol was custom, "I already have extra guards sent to oversee the merchant sectors and storage areas. With all the shuffling and chaos going on it might be some days before anyone realizes that code-lock on the storage containers isn't simply some machine sprit going rampant."

"Very well, do your best. We'll meet again in eight hours unless something pressing comes up in the meanwhile. Mr. Enzo I realize that you'll be wanting to spend some time in the Hospital with your girl. I will take your shift," he raised a hand before Donat could speak, "Yes I realize I need to rest Mr. Enzo. I will do so, and soon. Lord knows my wife has no intention of letting me sit on this chair more than is strictly necessary, but family takes precedence over duty at times. Not always, mind you, but I am loath to hoist more unpleasantness on us than we can avoid. You may all go, except for you Navigator Calven. I still have business with you."

"That you sir," Donat patted the pocket in which he kept his chronometer and turned to one of the great hovering marble slabs that ferried people too and from Sáclair's throne. The others followed him closely, eager to get to their respective duties and to sleep. Osma paused briefly to shoot a mistrusting look at the Navigator before boarding the platform with the rest. It made a slight sucking noise as it sunk beyond the limits of the privacy filter and sunk to the floor of the great hall.

"My answer about the Astronomicon hasn't changed just because we're in private captain," Zorn's near translucent fingers held his elegant snuffbox. He snorted a pinch of it and shook his head slightly before pursing his lips and continuing, "There's little to filter out worth mentioning."

"And what was there to filter," Sáclair was not foolish enough to take a navigator at his word alone. Their own sense of entitlement often gave them the impression that anything possible of escaping their notice was not worth noticing, "You need not dilute your speech. I am neither ignorant of your craft nor am I blind to obvious omissions."

The Navigator smiled wrily and pulled out the star map once more. He fumbled with the controls for a moment and a handful of bright white lights appeared in the spiraling green mass of stars, "Setvan and I have searched for the great beacon of mankind but we've had no luck. There are, however, lesser beacons spread throughout nearby space. Small and insignificant by comparison to the glorious light of the Astronomicon and the psychic choirs of Terra but they're none the less. They bear a passing resemblance to the hardwired astropathic relays we use for interplanetary communication."

"I thought you said there were no signs of civilization in the area?" A deep sinking feeling was overtaking the Captain. Sáclair hoped he was wrong about the meaning of the white lights but he doubted it.

"I said there was no _Imperial_ civilization in the area sir," Zorn looked altogether too excited at the prospect of being beyond the known frontiers, "I suspect that this method of directing warp travel is a xenos methodology. I did not mention it because there is no reason to start a panic. It's not the working of any of the known enemies of the Empire, nor recorded in the annuls of the Dark Age."

"So they could attack us at any moment?"

"Sir they're either unaware we're here, or ignoring us, or deciding if we're a threat to them, or doing any one of a million things. We know as much about the probability of being attacked here as we do about how to predict the comings and goings of Eldar Corsairs," he shrugged, "I can't do much more than speculate at the moment. I've held off on sending out an astropathic distress signal for just that reason. We have no idea who will get it or how they will react. And frankly I'm a bit unsure of the quality of any transmissions we send we'll have to sedate an astropath heavily before we can get them to be compliant. You know as well as I and better sir, a drug addled mind tends to be more susceptible to the predications of the warp."

"Send it," Sánclair ran a hand through his hair, "Wide band, no decryptions. If we don't get water soon it won't matter what the Imperial Cult thinks of our actions. We'd be far beyond even their reach. I'll have Osma post guards with you in a private astropathic communications cell. That ought to give you the privacy you need to keep this off the lips of the crew and ought to allow us to contain the damage if it all goes pear shaped."

"Could not such a course be seen as unwise?" Zorn's voice of concern did not mirror the look of pleasure on his face, "Our past history of interacting with xenos is what got the ship indentured to the Inquisitor to begin with. Such actions could be problematic."

"It's not heresy for a damaged ship to call out for aid. We need to get water from somewhere." Sáclair looked pensive, "The Inquisitor has mentioned circumstances that merited interactions with xenos in the past. He has them on retainer for Throne's sake," Calven raised an eyebrow un mild surprise, though Sáclair doubted it was genuine, "I'll talk to him about getting some special dispensation from the Inquisition to pardon our sins on the offhand chance we're exceeding our writ of trade."

"And if the Inquisitor decides that it's heresy for us to even entertain the notion of trading with Xenos?" Zorn's smile went wide, "What will you do then?"

"I prefer not to speculate on such unfortunate circumstances Mr. Calven, " Sáclair said in a voice of ruthless composure, "Send the distress signal. Take Sácomer with you, he's senior enough to negotiate with any xenos or humans who might get the signal. Do it sooner rather than later."

"Of course Captain," Zorn smiled cruelly, "I know you'll act in the best interest of the ship."

* * *

The main drag was an utter mess. People cleaned their shop windows with buckets and mops soaked in cleaning solvents. Servitors, blessedly unable to smell the filth they were in, skittered about the broken septic lines fixing, cleaning, welding and sealing. The smell was overpowering. Sørian gagged and pulled his scarf tight over his mouth. By the gods but that stank, even through the perfumed oils and opiates he'd soaked the soft wool in it stank. Then again, he always though the lower levels stank of the filth that lived in them, "low breed scum, all of them."

The wool of his cloak itched on skin more accustomed to the more refined smoothness of silk. Silk would have drawn attention to him though. A man in silk and velvet did not walk through murk and mire lest he had dire pressing need. It was unlikely anyone would question that need today but any efforts he could make to go unnoticed would better serve his purposes. Keep out of the eyes of security and the crew alike, "Wouldn't want them thinking too hard about where I'm going now would I?"

He blinked briefly then remembered his bondservant was not with him to laugh at his jokes. The servant had been left behind to oversee the repairs of Sørian's quarters. With luck there would be a hot bath and some warm honeyed wine waiting for him when he returned to his apartments. He'd need a bath to be sure; it would not be fitting to pray while still caught in the stink of this place. His patron did so tend to be fickle about such things. The Prince of Excess was truly magnificent but his moods swung fast as any of the gods, well any of the gods save that blithering ruler of fools Khorne. It was just as well that prayers to his god proved as enjoyable as they were, the less subtle sacrifices asked by the other patrons would have been noticed even in the _Endless Bounty's_ state of disarray. A pity he'd have to put off finding a partner at the moment but the Amon Sui waited for no man.

He held his breath as security walked by. They'd have no cause to stop him. By all rights he should be down in the drag surveying the damages but it could prove indelicate were they able to draw a pattern between his strolls and certain misfortunes to overcome the _Endless Bounty_. He watched the bright uniforms of the officers, crisp even in the current state of the Drag, round the corner before he raised his head. He walked at a brisk pace, taking care not to seem that he was in too much of a hurry or too interested in heading anywhere in particular, till he reached the door of marked with a painting of a green hand. The hand itself was unremarkable on the _Endless Bounty._ The green fist of Amon was still a common household sigil. The scent of almonds and vinegar was unmistakable, the implanted nerve cluster picked up the pheromones clear as day.

He pushed the door open and had to bite back the urge to scream as a lithe figure wrapped in black synthaskin and blue silks yanked him through the door and put a serrated knife to his throat. He knew from experience the knife was poisoned with a pain-inducing paralytic. He stared into the eyeless porcelain mask of the woman and spoke in slow measured tones, "For the glory of the hand that grasps I come, for the glory of the hand that holds I come, for the glory of the hand that gives I come, for the glory of the hand I come."

He briefly wondered it she would accidentally knick him with the blade just to watch him twitch in pain. Their patron would appreciate that certainly. It wouldn't be the first time either. He'd never been able to figure out how the cultist knew that they shared the same dark patron. These meetings of the Amon Sui never exchanged names or showed faces without masks but he had instantly been recognized by the cultist as one of the Prince's flock. She delighted in testing his faith to their prince and patron. His more subtle excesses of drink and vice never sat well with her more violent excesses of rage and passion. Her body relaxed and she rubbed up against Sørian exquisitely as she rose from the ground, Sørian swallowed as he felt her shifting weight lift off him. He tried to ignore the way the synthaskin body sleeve conformed to every curve of her body, "Must we go through this every damned time I attend a meeting you pretentious bitch."

She spun her knife in her hand, leaned against the wall, and arched her back. She really did have curves. She giggled and spoke in husky tones, "The prince enjoys all excesses. Pain and pleasure, suffering and decadence, they're all the same to him. We must all be willing to bring our own ends to further his."

"Piss off you harridan of a woman," the curt tones of Adric Alan cut in. Sørian was not supposed to recognize Alan. None of the agents were supposed to recognize each other, that way if they were captured none of them could be traced back to each other. In fact only Phoneutria, the head of their organization, was supposed to know the true names of all members of the order. He knew that Adric recognized him as well but proprieties sake they referred to each other by their code names. Sørian was no more "Latrodectus" than Adric was "Atrax" or the cultist was "Hexathelidae" but needs were musts. There was a circle of some thirty or so men and women with similarly fake names and negotiable allegiances. A wide circle of bodyguards and attendants stood around them, silent and masked. They were prepared for the first signs of trouble. They were not all devotees of the dark gods, though he suspected many were. The Amon Sui were willing to turn a blind eye to such things. Orders were usually given privately, either through dead drops or coded messages, but once a week the group met just so that Phoneutria could issue more pressing orders to the group.

In the center of room was girl strapped to a pole. She sobbed quietly. Her tears stained her already mussed dress. Sørian though she was familiar though he could not place from where. She must be a noble's daughter for him to remember the face. He wouldn't have bothered to memorize a common crewman's no matter how pretty. It would have been beneath him. The girls cries and whimpers were mildly interesting but the holo-projector next to him showing the narrow, proud form of Phoneutria was what really caught his attention. The man's image shimmered as it paced backwards and forwards around the circle, eyeing ever man in the circle with contempt. Phoneutria was the only one who never bothered to wear a mask. Sørian had never seen the man, though he had often glimpsed around the great hall hoping to see him and to know him for whom he really was.

His haughtiness and slurred speech marked him as one of upper Amon stock, though where an upper Amon might be hiding on the bounty was a mystery to Sørian. Few were allowed to say other than those who bowed and bent to the whims of the Inquisitor. His stomach churned to think of the once proud Amon bowing and bending and preening around the Inquisitor. Phoneutria was certainly not one of them. His ranting would have been difficult to forget.

"I expect an explanation for your lateness Latrodectus," he slurred out. The hologram stared slightly beyond Sørian giving the distinct impression that Phoneutria was blind, "You were expected on the hour. It is already half past."

Sørian thought of the pain inducers at the cultist's belt. Phoneutria was fond of public examples, "There were difficulties in acquiring discreet passage. I would not risk your safety."

"Of course you wouldn't," Phoneutria gave no impression that he believed a word of it but allowed him to enter the circle with the others, "Arrive late twice and I might start considering Hexathelidae's proposals with a more liberal eye."

He wasn't joking. Phoneutria had no sense of humor to speak of. Sørian managed to say composed in spite of Hexathelidae's insufferably pleased expression. He would have to show up early for the next year to avoid ending up as part of Hexathelidae's prayers to her patron, "If you so wish it. I will obey without hesitation."

"Your willingness is irrelevant only your obedience matters to me or to us," He clicked his tongue off his teeth and turned to the center of the circle, "And it seems that we've had a rash of disobedience lately. I give simple orders. When I give one I expect it to be obeyed, for the glory of the hand and the might of the Amon Sui," his holographic hand brushed the face of the sobbing girl, "When we do not obey punishment must be met."

He tossed his arms wide and resumed his frenzied pacing, "We are in the center of the wilderness lost to the Empire. Think of it! Virgin stars, untamed lands, everything the guild could dream to have. We risk of losing it all if Faust decides not to return and share the means by which he achieved it. We promised to bring this ship to its knees before we reached Belzafest. In that we failed," he shot a murderous look at the girl, "We promised to kill the Inquisitor when he made planet fall. Our agents never even saw him set foot on the ground of the planet. And why," he looked to the girl, "Inaction. We have lacked proper motivation. Hexathelidae darling would you please come over here. You too Latrodectus."

The two jumped into action nearly running to the center of the circle. Hexathelidae was staring at the girl with barely controlled anticipation behind the porcelain covering all but her eyes. The knives seemed ready to pop out from the webbing about her shoulders and corset and into her hands at a moment's notice. Sørian suspected he had a similar expression on his face. Phoneutria rarely provided treats such as this.

Phoneutria pretended not to notice, "You all know of my punishments as theory as ideals. None of you know of them as realities. It is time that changed. Hexathelidae and Latrodectus are going to show you what happens to those who do not finish their planned duties in a timely fashion." He leaned in and whispered, "Consider this a girl. Pretty little thing isn't she. Her father was tasked with delaying the efforts of Magos Kerrigan. Not a true believer some have accused, just a fool with a love of gold and a lack of understanding for his proper duty. The explosives were never detonated and the inquisitor lives. Worse still he nearly failed to complete his part of the prophet's revival. A simple task of insurmountable importance he blunders so blindly that we are forced to dispose of members of the Mago's retinue in secret," his lip curled as though saying the name brought him great pain, "He failed and so he must give penance to our cause to prove his loyalty. This girl is my price."

The circle of men and women stood silent and impassive, none wishing to show recognition or fear. A short, knobby-legged man squeaked and shifted his shoulders as though about to say something. Phoneutria shifted his eyes to the man, "A hefty price for you. Flesh and blood for failure, her life to save yours. That was my price."

The man's voice cracked as he replied, "A price willingly paid in service of the hand," he voice grew squeaky as the girl screamed though her gag, "I have other daughters after all, an she's only a bastard."

"Indeed," Phoneutria smiled, "Then she means nothing to you? Nothing at all."

"I part with her willingly," the man's voice evened as he felt more secure in his safety. His shoulders did not relax but he ceased drumming his hand on his left leg, "I am a supplicant to the whims of the hand."

Phoneutria snapped his fingers and the two large bodyguards behind the knobby legged man grabbed his arms and dragged him forwards. Sørian noted the slightly fearful looks in all the Amon Sui agent's eyes. The man struggled against the two meaty fists holding him in place, "I'm your master bondsman. Unhand me."

"No sir," the man's gravely voice replied, "I am in contracted in your service through the Amon Sui. It to them that I belong or have you forgotten?"

The man kicked and yelled in panic and dawning comprehension, "Sir! Phoneutria! I gave you what you asked for. I served you loyally."

Phoneutria laughed, "Foolish man, a sacrifice has no meaning if it holds no value to you. I take what you offer and more for your arrogance. Hexathelidae, Latrodectus, I believe that it is high time since your crafts have been honed," Sørian and Hexathelidae bowed in deference before following the strong-arm guards forcing the knobby legged man and his daughter into the back room. A room Sørian knew to be soundproof from experience, a room where he gained boons from his god. As the door slowly closed the voice of Phoneutria rang clear. "Oh and Latrodectus do remember to not be late again. I should be very cross if you were to be late again."

* * *

The shifting colors of hyperspace were endlessly speeding past the false window, bathing everyone on the Bridge of the Primus class ship in a dull red glow. At the center of the bridge, sitting stiffly and observing his crew with an expression of mild disapproval was a man with a ruff of great hear that stuck out like a peacock's feathers. The man's hair and everything about his dress was tailored specifically to reflect his status and bloodline. Seated at the command consuls were young men with similar, though smaller, crests of feathered hair. The only man in the room wearing a crest of hair vaguely as grand as Captian Ibil's, was an abstentious looking man in the broad striped silks of the Psychic's guild. Ibil sat with his elbows on the armrests and his fingertips pressed together at his lips in an expression of concentration.

"Pretty, isn't it sir?" asked a young officer with a broad smile and smug eyes. One of a number of officers assigned to the primus by blood rather than merit, thought Ibil. They did have a habit of opening their mouths in order to prove their inexperience. For reasons beyond his understanding his new recruits were convinced that a captain staring out into hyperspace was thinking deep thoughts rather than doing what any sane person did while on standby in hyperspace. Namely thinking of everywhere you would rather be than sitting in a chair staring at shifting red nothingness for ten hour shifts, "Shame it's only a view screen and not a real window. I want to be able to see our enemies with my own eyes, look in to their hearts."

"Mr. Marran I suggest in future you simply shut your lips and look like a fool rather than open your lips and prove my suspicions," The Bridge of a Primus had no true windows. It was seated in the ships heart behind many thick sheets of armored metal and ceramics. The command crew of the "_Majesty of Morva_" was seated at their posts. The Centauri went through great pains to ensure that the exact location of the bridge on a primus was slightly different from ship to ship. It was more expensive to produce ships that way. Substantially more expensive than the cost of making the newer, faster Vorchan class warships but it prevented Narn saboteurs from being able to sneak to the bridge and assassinate high-ranking officials and officers. Unfortunately for Captain Ibil Movan it also meant that the servants responsible from bringing him hot Jala was always insufferably late in coming. Not for the first time since being given the duty of patrolling the wild space at the edge of Drazi territory did he curse the name of Vocator Reefa for condemning him to this pitiful scrap of nowhere.

What matter was it to the great Centauri if the Drazi were to choose to attack their neighbors? The great Centauri Lion ought to be stretching its claws and grasping back the territories lost, not watching the lesser powers fighting over table's scraps. It was a sad time to be a Centauri for sure. He rubbed his hand over his generous forehead and muttered darkly as his aide strode into the room carrying a glass of hot Jala on a silver platter. Ibil must have done something to set himself in disfavor with his house to earn him the misfortune of such an addlebrained aide; the boy walked with altogether too much pride for his station but it was perhaps to be expected from house Reefa, "Great Maker! Did you feel the need to walk every corridor in the ship before coming?"

"Apologies sir, I'm not used to the ships layout yet. My previous posting was on a luxury liner, I could not find a map of the ship."

"Addlebrained child, this is a warship not a pleasure liner. There are no maps posted on the walls nor will there ever be," he shared a pained look with the guardsman to his right. The guardsman, in the tight breeches and green jacket of house Movan stared back impassively. Just as well he didn't talk, a soldier who wasted too much time on words was a fool in Ibil's mind. He looked to the data pad in his aide's hand being careful not to say the aide's name and risk giving any impression of approval, "I'll take my messages now as well boy. Be quick about it."

His aide scowled as he put down the tray on the table next to Ibil and looked down to the data pad, "You've received several messages from home-world sir. Your wife has laid out a list of the expenses of your household that she had billed to your personal accounts. I'd suggest altering the access codes to them soon sir, there are some irregularities in the accounting." Unsurprising but not tragic, it was a wife's prerogative to steal from her husband in case of divorce or dishonor in later life. The next message was just as mundane but no less frustrating, "It would seem that we've surrendered another colony to the Narn or rather are about to soon. House Reefa seems to believe that we will soon be forced to retreat from quadrant 37."

"Another glorious victory for the Centauri Republic," muttered Ibil darkly. The Emperor was not as great of a leader as his father. His father had perhaps had a taste for war beyond what was strictly necessary but the new Emperor was almost six rods short of a man. Most people said so in private though none had the political power to do much else than mutter darkly. There was little impetus to do more than talk though. Taking over the Empire at this point was a fool's errand, who wants to be the next in a line of failing Emperors?

His Aide continued, "There's also a general order about our mission in wild space warning us to beware of Drazi warships and… I believe that we need to get a doctor into the bridge as soon as is possible."

"Is our mission making you ill boy?"

"No sir," he protested though his expression had gone distinctly nauseous, "But I believe the honorable representative of the Guild of Psychers is in some considerable pain."

He was right. Elan Vashan was swaying drunkenly as he gritted his teeth together moaning. He was gripping the sash that marked his rank within psychic's guild tightly, stretching the silk to the point of breaking. Two guardsmen ran from Ibil's side to help steady the guild representative. The psychic's face had gone totally white and his eyes were unfocused. The tentacles wrapped around his pelvis shifted and jerked beneath his shirt indecently. His arms and legs twitched. He muttered to himself darkly as he steadied himself, walked over behind a hanging tapestry, and emptied the contents of his stomach.

Ibil winced at the scent of vomit, "Call the doctor to the bridge. Mr. Vashan seems to have taken ill." He waved to his aide.

"No! Not… not ill," Elan Vashan wiped at his face with his sleeve, "Not me anyway. I don't know about him."

"I see. He's the one in pain then?" said a slightly apprehensive Ibil. Elan was starting at a blank patch of gilded metal on the wall with wrapped attention, "Rush that order for the doctor Mr. Reefa."

"Great maker! Listen, I am not ill and I am not hallucinating. I'm fine just listen," his tone was anything but fine, "I just received a message, at least I think it was a message. There's someone out here lost, in trouble. They want help."

Par Milla, the comms officer, looked up perplexed, "I haven't received any distress signals in hours sir. Are you sure you've not taken ill. Fever will make a man imagine any number of things."

Elan closed his eyes in an apparent effort to resist the urge to scream, "To hell with fever. I don't give a damn what you have and have not received. There is a distress signal being sent out from a nearby system… by someone not recorded in Centauri history. No race I can think of has such powerful psychics."

"The Vorlons?" Mr. Reefa looked hopeful. Ibis couldn't blame him. The idea of coming to a Vorlon's rescue had a distinct appeal to it.

"The Vorlons send tachyon transmissions the same as anyone else… at least I think they do. I suppose they could send a telepathic distress signal, they're rumored to be able to any number of things," Ibil twisted the stem of his glass between his thumb and index finger watching the green liquid swirl, "But I can't see them pleading with one of the lesser races for help. And even if they did, what can we do against something that troubles a Vorlon?"

"Sir, if we don't help whomever it is sending the message I do suspect I will go mad. It's like being trapped in a room with someone distinctly infuriating who won't stop talking," Elan said in a pained voice, "And I suspect I should become an infuriating man in this bridge till someone was so kind as to liberate me of the noise."

"Don't be melodramatic Mr. Elan," Ibis smiled, "And calm your nerves. I intend to respond to your distress signal. It isn't as though we're saddled with an abundance of other pressing matters. I suspect the Drazi will survive without us for the next few hours without the benevolent gaze of the Centauri Republic's finest."

"Of course sir. I knew you would make the right choice. I have absolute confidence in your judgment," he said in a voice of great anticipation, "I'm not sure exactly where the signal is coming from but I believe it's in this direction." The psychic pointed off into the void of hyperspace.

It was strange to be traveling through hyperspace without exact co-ordinates of the destination. The _Majesty of Morva_ was not a particularly agile ship and every time Elan decided that they were going in the wrong direction course corrections took longer than Ibis would normally care for. Elan was taking them farther and farther into wild space, the area at the rim of the known galaxy. Little was known about the rim and few expeditions were willingly taken to it. It was an odd place where many dark races were rumored to live and only a handful of known hyperspace gates existed.

Elan was determined to drag them as far into that scrap of nowhere as he could, farther and farther from the network of hyperspace gates. Farther from safety, perhaps this would be a true first contact situation after all. The men who made first contact with other races were often richly paid for their efforts in land and titles. The ill-fated Centauri first contact with the Dilgar had been rewarded by the Centarum in spite of fiasco. The Centauri hated unknowns. The unknown could not be prepared for or used and was insufferably prone to destroying the machinations of the noble houses. Those who made the unknown matters of the universe known and quantifiable were rewarded accordingly.

"Just a bit farther," Elan muttered to himself. His eyes were closed and his ear was raised as though he was trying to hear something in the distance. He opened his eyes and tapped on the display in front of officer seated at navigation controls, "There. We need to exit there."

The _Majesty of Morva_'s hyperdrive generator hummed into life and a swirling window opened in front of it. After a brief flash of light the view screen shifted from images of a swirling red maelstrom to blackness of space dappled with pinpricks of starlight. They'd existed into a binary star system with seven planets, twenty one moons, and one great hulking mass of spaceship in orbit of the fourth moon of the fifth planet.

"It would seem Mr. Elan's fever is catching. For if he's going mad then I suppose I am as well," chuckled the navigation officer.

"Great Maker that's a large ship!" Ibis muttered darkly. It was easily three times the size of the _Majesty of Morva_, "Not a transport certainly."

The tactical officer Pex Wen was starting at readout with wrapped attention. Pex was running his fingers through his ridiculous goatee and drumming his fingers on his knee "I believe it's a warship. It certainly has enough guns to be one. Then again even a transport is capable of carrying guns."

"Is this a trap?" Ibis said as the viewscreen zoomed in closer to the ship. It was most certainly well armed even if it wasn't a warship. A number of smaller craft were darting about it, moving to the planet below and to the moons beyond, "A large ship doesn't guarantee great weapons but I'd prefer not to chance it."

"I would assume their signal is genuine. They aren't making any efforts to use electronic countermeasures and there are several gaping holes in the hull that have only recently been patched. You don't plan an ambush with a single damaged warship, even a large one," Pex muttered to himself, "There are some strange energy readings to this ship though, readings I can't place."

"I would be astounded if we were able to just guess at the purposes of every system," Ibil stood up and walked over to the tactical display, "Do they know we're here?"

"They know… muttered Elan," the psychic sat down on the floor, "I can't understand the thoughts exactly but I understand the message. They're frightened but glad to see another person. At least I think they are, the specifics are always confusing when communicating with non-Centauri minds," he started pawing at his sash, "I think I've managed to convince him that we're no danger to them, at least for now."

"Hail them Mr. Milla," Ibis smiled, "Its about time we met our new friends."

"I've tried sending tachyon signals but they're not responding sir," the young officer was looking perplexed, "I think that they must rely on psychics for long ranged communications," his eyes widened as the gears turned in his head, "And why would they? If they're going to send out distress signals though psychics then why not use them exclusively for long-range communications? Sir I don't know if I'm even going to be able to reach these people."

"Don't be too sure of that Mr. Milla," Pex sounded pleased with himself, "Check microwave band and radio transmissions and try running them through an audio-visual encoder. I suspect that their short range transmissions might be more viable."

"Microwave? Damned primitives," muttered Milla as he re-calibrated the communications network, "By the Gods they're definitely sending out radio signals and microwave signals to communicate between the larger ship and the smaller ones."

"Can the language programs translate?" This was looking increasingly better to Ibis. He could think of at least one technology these primitives might want to trade for right off the bat.

"Doubtful sir," Milla shook his head, "Not without a frame of reference. And even then," he looked down at a flashing light, "sir, I think they're hailing us."

"Then respond Maker take you! We can't afford to anger them this early into a first contact situation," Ibis couldn't help but wonder what they would look like. Would they be bipedal like the Humans and Narn or insectoid like the Gaim, or even crystalline as some claimed the Vorlons to be? He briefly amused himself with fantasies of a race of beautiful promiscuous women with smooth heads and golden skin. Great Maker it had been far too long since he'd last attended a gentleman's establishment.

"Just calibrating a few things sir," Millan muttered as he jiggled the controls, "And there we go!"

The entire bridge crew held its collective breath as a image flickered into life on the viewscreen and Ibis looked at a scene that seemed familiar but at the same time altogether alien. The first thing Ibis noticed was the wide double-headed bird of prey painted onto the wall behind the aliens. The solid gold of the eagle stood out garishly against the crimson paint on the wall. In front of the wall were figures that shared a passing resemblance to the Centauri, but only a passing one. A group of figures wearing hooded red cloaks fringed with black and white checks were clustered around a smaller, somewhat frazzled looking alien strapped into a chair. White globes with mechanical arms hovered about the machine, adjusting and tweaking it. In front of that cluster were two men; at least he assumed they were men, facing the camera. The first was almost skeletal looking and pallid. He had a milky white eye third sitting in the center of his forehead that glowed slightly. The man to his right was, for lack of a better word, massive, not muscular just large. Great folds of blubber hung down from his arms and his entire body was suspended from a mechanical frame.

The blubbery man and the smaller man raised their arms to their chests, crossing them with thumbs locked and fanning them over their chests. The larger man spoke at friendly pace in alien speech, "Guten Tag creatura foris plurrimi sanctus terra Imperator. Dhe paqe qoftë mbi ju." He smiled widely in what Ibis hoped was a friendly gesture. Considering the man's considerable girth Ibis couldn't help but wonder what prey this species ate to make it so large.

Still it couldn't hurt to be polite. He responded by offering his hands palms up and saying, "Greetings from the Centauri Republic. I offer you the hands of friendship!"

The wobbling chins shook with approval. Apparently the hands of friendship had some sort of similar cultural basis. The man spoke in the alien tones again apparently eager to get to business. Ibis turned to Elan, "Do they realize we can't understand a word they're saying?"

"Apparently not. I'll try to explain it," Elan scrunched up his face and grunted. The men in the Alien ship turned around to the man strapped to the chair as he started to speak. Ibis realized with dawning horror that the man strapped into the machine must be a psychic, the chair he sat in was probably way permitted him to send psychic transmissions into hyperspace. Moreover it seemed likely that the psychic had no choice in the matter, one rarely shackled themselves to a chair of their own volition. More alarmingly after closer examination the globe like robots flitting about the room were quite clearly built to resemble skulls. No, not to resemble skulls, they _were_ skulls.

The large man, apparently unaware of Ibis revulsion, turned from the psychic and bowed slightly. Apparently he was apologizing for his rudeness. Ibis bowed back, "Mister Milla would you be so kind as to transmit the first contact protocols to them via microwave transmission. I would like to be able to actually do more than bow at some point."

"Of course sir."

The two men on the other ship turned to the cluster of men in red robes when one of them started to speak. The voice was distinctly metallic. It seemed entirely possible that the men in red robes were some form of android or servant species to the other two. One of the androids pulled up a red box and asked something of the larger man. The larger man smiled and nodded.

"Well men, prepare to receive their language codes, this went about as smoothly as I could hope for," Ibis smiled to himself. His contentment did not last. As soon as the men in red turned back to the man on the chair and tapped into the small computer Elan began to scream. Ibis jerked back in horror and looked up at the men on the screen, "Stop damnit! Stop!"

The skeletal man rounded on the men behind him, "Stop jetzt! Vacuus creatura de apparatus, Stop jetzt pro EGO Träne sicco vestri pectus pectoris of lux lucis! Nos brauchen lemma."

One of the metal men responded impassively, "Nos can non subsisto. Phasmatis of apparatus hat einen eigenen Willen. Wissen du geest est partis per mens."

"Disconnect the transmission," Ibis yelled, "Do it now!"

"Do I fire on them sir! Do I fire on them?" The tactical officer was starting at the twitching psychic with mounting apprehension. Ibis was tempted to agree with him, they needed to get out of that system quickly. He might have been too eager to dismiss the ship as a threat.

"No!" Elan spat up a bloody glob of spittle, "They aren't attacking. They're sharing their language and basic math," he grunted in pain, "At least I think that's what's happening. I don't think they intended for this to be sent to someone who wasn't prepared for it."

Elan groaned in frustration, "Somebody get me paper," he waved away the soldier helping him to his feet, "to the abyss with standing up just get me some damned paper."

"Even so I must insist that we leave the system immediately," the tactical officer had already started typing in the commands to warm up the hyperspace engines, "We can head for homeworld and regroup."

"Fine, send them the co-ordinates for Babylon 5 and get us out of here. We've done our duty. Let Mollari deal with this mess." Ibis was not looking forward to this debriefing on the home world. It would be a nightmare.

* * *

Thanks to Hammerchuckery for pointing out that I forgot to put in section breaks.

Reviews as always are welcome.

Seriously guys there are close to five hundred of you reading this story, any input at all would be useful.


	7. Chapter 7

Generally speaking the common peoples of _The Endless Bounty_ were not granted the privilege of a Noble's funeral. There were a number of crematoriums based around the plasma reactors that saw to their needs. The crematoriums had been incapacitated by the damage to the ship meaning that it could be a matter of days before the bodies were all properly cremated. The bodies would fester and rot in that time. Neither Danzig nor Father Al'Ashir wanted that. So to expedite the process they decided to simply bury the lot as Lionhearts.

Some of the nobles had protested the decision. They'd gone as far as to petition at Sáclair's seat of power in the great hall. The idea of their relatives being sent off with the commoners was 'distasteful and beyond acceptable'. Daul chuckled at the thought of the face of Bertrand Gauge and the other self-important nobles when Sáclair had let loose. Daul doubted that Sáclair would actually fire them out the airlock with the other 'useless dead weight'. Apparently the nobility of the bounty wasn't so sure, effectively silencing the privileged and self-important.

Thousands cramped into the wide space of one of the many docking bays that lined the _Endless Bounty_. Every crewman and noble not actively engaged in repairs was in attendance. Daul walked through the sobbing crowd of mourners. They gave the Inquisitor a wide berth. He noticed that even behind their white veils of mourning, none of the crew dared look him in the eye. Even bandaged and bruised as he was an Inquisitor was to be feared. He wished Cairn was with him. As soon as the Skitarii had been sure Daul was properly bandaged Cairn had excused himself to assist with the death preparations for the Adeptus Mechanicus. Thus it was necessary for a substitute to serve as Daul's bodyguard. Dorn was out of the question; Sáclair was loath to allow the Archo-flagellant on his ship while comatose.

How Cairn had purchased the services of one of the ships indentured Ogryn in the few short hours Daul slept was yet another of Cairn's mysteries but hire one he had. For that matter he was unsure how he'd already purchased a suit emblazoned with Daul's personal heraldry for the Ogryn. Galut was as malodorous and clumsy as one could expect from an Ogryn. Daul was reasonably convinced that Galut had eaten the wax fruit from the anteroom of his chambers but had great hulking thews as thick as Daul's chest was broad.

Daul winced as he adjusted the sword belt at his side. Even with some of the accelerated healing salves and pain killing regents applied by Cairn his broken ribs still throbbed. All things considered he had managed to escape the conflict relatively unharmed. The wide space of the loading bay was full of the bodies of those who had not been so lucky. The linen covered corpses of several hundred crewmen, nobles, and soldiers were laid out side by side on the floor of the other side of the airlock, equal in death. The Damascan tradition was to burn the bodies of the dead, any bodies buried in Damascus soil would be dug up by the native creatures of Damascus in short order. The Lionhearts followed that tradition to its logical extreme. They dropped the bodies of their dead into a sun so that they could become part of the universe they traversed.

Galut frowned and rubbed his large hands together, "I don' like funerals. Too much death."

"Nobody likes funerals Gaul," Daul had this same conversation with the Ogryn twice already. Galut was easily sidetracked, "We do them because we have to, not because we want to."

"Don' smell right sir," the Ogryn muttered. Daul was sure he saw something in the abhuman's teeth that hadn't died yet.

"Try holding your breath as long as you can," muttered Daul sarcastically, he missed the infinitely more expedient services of Cairn, "Air is where the smell is kept."

"Good idea sa' I'll do tha' eh?" The large man breathed in deeply and puffed out his cheeks as far as he could.

"It is good to see you up and about Inquisitor. The rumors of your demise were clearly exaggerations," Daul turned around and found himself face to face with the diminutive ship's Chaplain. Al'Ashir was a portly man with a thick braided beard a tall back hat. Small golden Aquilla and prayers of purity were stitched into the fabrics of his robe and hat, spelled in the flowing script of ancient Damascan. Chained to the belt at his waist was a thick tome, covered in red leather. Like all prayer books of the bounty it had been made by hand, copied and engraved lovingly by Father Al'Ashir himself. He was a man of the Emperor and a man of Faith, but not a man of blind obedience least of all to the Inquisition.

"Such a waste," muttered Father Al'Ashir looking out the airlock at the bodies stacked like cordwood, "The loss of these men and women Inquisitor."

"It was the will of the Emperor, Father," Daul smiled sadly. He almost actually believed it as he said, "The Emperor has a plan for us all. You mark that well."

"The greatest Heresies are committed by the most loyal before they've ever realized it Inquisitor. Do not let your righteousness overpower your sense," Father Al'Ashir started flipping through the well worn pages of his prayer book, "Else we be forced to consign more men to the stars. Now go," he pointed to the crimson and gold silks in the distance, "You're the one who brought them here, you be the one to convince them of the righteousness of their deeds. I suspect they'll get greater comfort from your words than from mine."

"Of course Father, anything I can do to alleviate the pain of others… breathe you great lout!" he yelled up at the purpling face of the Ogryn, "Breathe! Breathe, for the love of the Emperor."

The Ogryn exhaled and looked down. Daul winced from the powerful halitosis, "It was working sir. I couldn't smell nothing! You're a thinker you is."

"Just come," Daul winced as he turned too quickly, "We have work to do."

It wasn't hard to find the Lionhearts. They were nothing if not flamboyant. Several hundred well-dressed soldiers were sitting on the floor in front of the airlock, each of them holding a musical instrument. There was not an arms length of space in front of the hundred meters of airlock door that was not occupied by a morose warrior minstrel. Song, with the Lionhearts there was always song in everything they did. When he got within about ten paces of the Lionhearts someone yelled out an order in Ancient Damascan.

Out of the lines of Lionhearts came Danzig, Sergi and Hamman. They were wore their best silk dress uniforms, crimson with gold lace sashes around their waists. Each had a saber strapped to his waist and had wrapped woolen bands of tasseled cloth around his head topping it with a black pillbox hat, "I welcome you Inquisitor. As you shed blood with the Lionhearts it is only fitting that you be here to see off the honored dead."

"I must confess I'm surprised it's Donat Enzo who is overseeing this ceremony and not Sáclair," the Captian didn't seem the type to miss a ceremony of this magnitude.

"It's an old custom I'm afraid," Danzig tucked his flute under his arm, "The Captain may never be physically present at a funeral for the Lionhearts, though he does play an important role. He must stand on the throne of the ship and personally control the docking bay doors to send them into the hereafter. It's viewed as a great honor."

"It is right to honor those who have aided in the cause of the Emperor's will," Daul sighed, "I only wish that we could have defeated Faust so that we could have properly earned their sacrifice."

Sergi adjusted the tassels from his scarf, "I wouldn't worry about it too much sir. I know that Semal would have felt dying to save what few of the Belzafesters we could was worth it." He looked pointedly at a crowd of people to the back of the wide docking bay wearing a mess of ragged dress blacks rather than the lacy whites favored by the crew of the _Endless Bounty_. They were hardly properly dressed for a funeral but dress clothes hadn't been a priority for the fleeing Belzafest colonists. Even at this distance and surrounded _Endless Bounty_ the looks of gratitude from the colonists was absolute and unwavering, "It is good that we saved them."

Sergei's voice was friendly but had an edge to it. The caged Belzafest colonists they hadn't been able to save were clearly on his mind. Sergi could be a problem when Daul started checking the population for genetic manipulations.

Daul pointed to the men in crisp uniforms of the standing round the Belzafest colonists, "I see that you've appointed Osma's security forces to guard them till they've been properly screened. A wise choice."

"Indeed," Danzig interjected, "Oh don't give me that look Sergei. They were on the planet for a damned month with those… creatures. People have become heretics for reasons substantially less valid than fear for their own lives."

Sergei nodded slowly. He looked at the group with concern, "I suppose it's better to be safe than sorry. Still it's good that we save any of them at all, even if we do have to space a few heretics."

"A mere formality I'm sure," Hamman chortled, "They're a scraggily looking lot but they got away from Faust's troops quickly enough. Takes some real courage to plan hit and run attacks on those damned half-breeds. More still to chose to live in those poisoned mists for a month rather than surrender."

Danzig looked to his chronometer, "It's time," he turned to Daul, "You don't know the words to our songs of prayer but I offer you the opportunity to stand with us and witness the going of the fallen comrades."

"I accept," Daul nodded, "Without hesitation." Being allowed to stand with the Lionhearts at this ceremony would improve his political situation on the _Endless Bounty_ substantially, "Galut, please be so kind as to stay here and stand watch." He took his place in the line of Lionhearts and recited as much of the Metzik prayers of purification as he could remember. He could not sing but it felt important to do something special for the fallen.

The inner doors to airlock began to close, separating the living from the dead. Father Al'Ashir's voice rang out over the speakers, leading the prayer chants for the fallen. They called for mercy. They called for absolution. They called for peace in death that had not been reached in life. They prayers of the Belzafesters too called for resolution and mercy but Daul noticed they added several prayers the 'Litanies of Retribution' during the normally refrain of the death rites.

The doors creaked and screeched as they met. There was a clanging and a squelching noise and then silence after the powerful sucking of atmospheric regulators ripped the usable air out of the space between the bulkheads.

Danzig put his hand up to the doors, "Farewell," he turned to Daul, "Sáclair has called a meeting in six hours to discuss the next point of action."

"Has there been any progress in determining our location?" Daul hadn't had much time for news. He'd barely had time to dress himself and reach the funeral.

"Of a sort," Danzig looked reticent to speak of it in mixed company, even his own men. He pulled out a data-slate and handed it to Daul, "Read this, it is an summary of our situation. You may do with the information as you will but I ask that you reserve any frustrations you have for our meeting after the ceremonies are completed."

Daul accepted the slate and started to read. His prayers caught in his throat and he had to stop. He stood there reading the data. The songs of the Lionhearts washed over him as he absorbed the gravity of their situation. It seemed their only paths in front of him were death or heresy. Trading with xenos, the sheer cheek of it! "It would seem we are left to chose between undesirable options."

Danzig nodded sadly as he rubbed his hand on the massive airlock doors, "I wonder how many of us will see these doors from the other side in the weeks to come," he looked morosely to Daul, "I wonder how many will not? I suppose that's up to you though Inquisitor."

Daul's eyes widened with comprehension and horror. By accepting Danzig's offer to stand with the Lionhearts in support of them he had unwittingly tossed his lot in with their schemes and those of their captain. The Lionhearts all looked at him with friendly, trusting expressions and he realized his path had been chosen for him already.

* * *

Being rousted at three in the morning because of a bad dream was unpleasant. Being rousted at three in the morning because there was a problem on station that ought to have already been dealt with by someone else was infuriating. Being rousted out of bed at three in the morning after a double shift by an irately hissing and screaming Narn demanding a meeting of the Babylon 5 Advisory Council was about as close to the seventh circle of hell as Ivanova could imagine. She had put her head down on the pillow for only a matter of seconds before her link had gone off informing her that the Narn Embassador pro tempore had called an emergency session of the Advisory Council. At three in the morning! She wouldn't even be able to cast a vote on behalf of Earth, she was only authorized to abstain so that Sinclair could make the vote when he returned.

Lieutenant Commander Susan Ivanova stared daggers at anyone foolish enough to eye contact with her as she strode to a transport tube. Not stomped, she was sure she was not stomping. The flower deliveryman who jumped out of her way had simply been overreacting. It was three in the fragging morning and her shift would be in just under four hours. The sooner they managed to get Commander Sinclair back on station the better, things seemed had taken a turn for the worse since he'd left. The Embassador's for both the Narn and Mimbari had become indisposed, the Centauri posturing had gotten worse than ever, and the League of Non Aligned Worlds was at each other's throats nearly twenty four seven.

It was all she could do to resist the urge to pull the ridiculous sash off the Brakiri ambassador's waist and choke him to death with it earlier that day when he'd had the audacity to suggest that the layout of Babylon 5 ought to be altered to better allow for the "will of Derchal." Every ambassador seemed to take Sinclair's absence as a sign of weakness and they were spending every waking moment petitioning for the most insufferably insignificant alternations to apartment locations and seating charts. Susan pondered the possibility of simply venting the entire council chambers into space as she entered the lift.

"Please hold the elevator Lieutenant Commander," a small Mimbari in white robes was shuffling quickly along the corridor. It was Lennier, assistant to Delenn and the temporary Mimbari ambassador in her absence. He was a lean and spindly man, with a temperament as pleasant as one could ask for. Susan thumbed the button for the elevator and allowed him to enter the lift.

"Thank you Lieutenant Commander," Lennier smiled brightly and innocently, "I did not get the message for the meeting till moments ago. My link was temporary silenced so as not to interrupt the flow of my prayers."

Ivanova's expression softened. Lennier was understandably troubled by Ambassador Delenn's condition. Delenn was encased in a cocoon.

Dr. Franklin assured her that Mimbari encasing itself in a cocoon was unprecedented in his records, "How is the Ambassador doing?"

"She is in a state of what she is on the way to the state of what she will be," Lennier said smiling sadly, "I pray to Valen twice a day. I believe it eases the process. Delenn told left me a message telling me to 'not worry about the now but to look forwards to what is yet to come."

"Mr. Lennier I'm not even sure I understand what you're talking about," Ivanova looked down at her watch trying to ignore thoughts about her next shift, "When I find out one of the Ambassadors I'm responsible to ensure the safety of has become encased in a cocoon and her assistant is refusing treatment based upon her wishes I'm more confused about the here and now than eager for what comes later.

"Frankly Lieutenant Commander on this we are in agreement," Lennir shrugged, "But understanding is not important only obedience."

The Mimbari sense of duty, it was hard not to respect it. It equally hard to associate the kidly Lennier and the Mimbari's blind obedience to duty that had started the war between their two peoples.

Ten years ago they would have been enemies. Susan would have killed the kind faced Lennier without a second thought and Lennier would have done the same. That was why the Babylon Project was so important. Given the opportunity to live together in peace sentient species tended to prefer co-existence to warfare.

The Earth-Mimbari war, for all its bloodshed, was a war caused by cultural misunderstanding during first contact between the two races. Captain Jankowski had seen the open gun ports of the Mimbari ship pointed at the EAS Prometheus and fired on the ship. It might even have been resolved through negations if someone hadn't bombed the peace summit.

He had no way of knowing that open gun ports was a sign of respect to the Mimbari, no way of knowing the Mimbari ruling body was onboard the ship, and certainly no way of knowing he would kill the religious leader of the Mimbari. Millions had died for what he did not know and because both sides were unwilling to talk. Three in the fragging morning but better three in the fragging morning than not at all. Lost sleep was better than lost lives any day.

The bell chimed and the lift opened onto the wide corridor leading to the Babylon 5 Advisory council chambers. Susan stepped out into the teeming mass of various assorted ambassadors and attendants filing towards the wide double doors to the chamber. All of them seemed to be just as cross about being rousted at this unreasonable hour as Susan was, though some were making more of an effort than others at hiding it. Lennier looked about in innocent curiosity, "Do you know why Na'Toth has called a meeting of the full advisory council at this hour? It is uncommon, even for the Narn."

"No, I can't say I do," Susan looked towards to portly figures with feathered hair wearing purple silk suits with yellow sashes, "but if the Narn government has authorized G'Kar's stand in to speak on behalf of the Narn Government you can bet the Centauri were involved somehow." The Narn would say the sky was green just to spite the Centari. The blood feud between the two peoples had been strong ever since the Centauri occupation of the Narn home world.

"You do not think someone invaded another Narn world do you?" his face scrunched up in distaste at the thought, Lennier abhorred violence, "So soon after they attacked Quadrant 37? Or did the Centauri government claim responsibility for it?"

"I doubt it. The Centauri government was as surprised by it as anyone else," Susan sighed, "As much as the Narn would probably like to go to war it would be too costly for both sides at the moment. "

"I find their respective stubbornness to be confusing," Lennier nodded sagely, "One must be more flexible in their dealings with others."

Susan resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but just barely. The Mimbari were twice as stubborn and rooted in tradition as any other race in the Advisory Council, "I'm sure they'll take it under advisement."

The bustling group filed into their respective seats in the council chambers. The League of Non Alligned Worlds sat in tiered seating opposite a wide table at which sat the five major powers, the Narn, the Centauri, the Mimbari, the Humans, and the Vorlon. Babylon 5 being a human station, a human was expected to sit at the center of the large table. Sinclair had always made being head of the Council seem effortless. Susan always felt small when she sat in the chair and took up the gavel.

She smacked the gravel down twice, "I call the council to order. I believe the Narn representative has a matter they need addressed."

Londo Mollari of House Mollari, ambassador to the Centauri Republic was seated at his chair with the palm of his hand placed squarely in his generous forehead massaging away a well-earned hangover. He glowered at Na'Toth, "I really must protest this entire meeting of the council. I insist upon dealing with the official ambassador to the Narn homeworld and the official ambassador only. If you will not censure this Harridan's presence," he pointed to Na'Thoth, "At least put limits upon the hour at which she can call us to discuss the same arguments for a fifth time. I would prefer my time were wasted during daylight hours."

Na'Toth curled back her lips to show white teeth and hissed, her orange reptilian features were twisted in contempt, "I will not sacrifice the interests of my people, not even so that you can have more time to gamble and womanize Centauri."

"Then at least have the decency to speak your madness quickly so that I might get back to something more important than the ravings of a self important, orange-skinned, spotted madwoman with delusions of greater standing."

Susan slammed down the gavel, "Ambassador Mollari sit down! I will not have this turn into a match of petty schoolyard name-calling," she scowled at Na'Toth's pleased grin, "I hope you didn't call this meeting simply to frustrate the Centauri Ambassador," she paused and twisted the gavel in her hand menacingly, "that would make me testy."

"Of course not Lieutenant Commander," the Narn female's nostrils flared as she snorted indignantly. Her red eyes shone balefully at the plump Centauri across the table, "My government is troubled by the actions of the Centauri."

"I will be glad to give you a properly scornful reply to your baseless and scurrilous allegations," the Centauri Ambassador massaged his temples, no doubt fighting hangover, "Just as soon as the Narn delegate will be so kind as to tell me what in the hell she is talking about. Or is this just another flight of fancy that seems to take them so often?"

"Nothing of the sort," Na'Toth snorted in a dismissive tone, "Serious news has come to my attention that required immediate attention. Any misfortune to the Ambassador's social schedule is purely co-incidental." She emphasized co-incidental smiling cruelly, "It has come to the attention of my government that there has been a first contact situation with a powerful unknown race in the middle of the uncharted space beyond the Drazi border."

The Drazi representative stood up abruptly, ruffling his purple sash. The smooth bony plate on the front of his scull clicked as the folds of scales below it shifted against it, "We have made no such contact! You called a meeting for this? For rumormongering and suspicion? I need not sit here to take these lies."

"I never said it was the Drazi who made the contact!" Na'Toth's understanding of subtle diplomacy left a great deal to be desired.

"Who then," said the Brakiri ambassador, "my government has made no such contact nor has that of the honorable Pak'ma'ra."

"It was a Centauri Primus class warship that made the first contact," Na'Toth looked more pleased than Ivanova had ever seen the woman. Her reptilian skin crinkled at the lips where her face curved into a wide grin, "A Centauri warship sent to spy on it's neighbors."

Londo scoffed and stood up, pacing in front of the League, being careful to make eye contact as he spoke, "Yes we had a ship at the edge of your territory, in uncontested space. As I suspect many of you have ships at the edge of ours at some time or another. The ship was sent to do legitimate research in an area not controlled by any known governments as well as to explore uncharted space."

"Do you often explore with warships along the borders of your neighbors Ambassador," The fin along the Abbai Ambassador's head was twitching with irritation, "Do you 'explore' the space around all of the League worlds or just those of the Drazi?"

"Honored ambassadors," Mollari smiled, "Do not mistake the actions of my government. We only have the best intentions."

"As you did for Narn no doubt," spat out Na'Toth.

Mollari sent a pained look at Susan, "The lies the Narn still feel compelled to tell about our people's relationships."

"Ambassadors!" Susan smacked the gavel down and stood abruptly. Her eyes flashed dangerously at the ambassadors. At the best of times Susan was imposing, on nearly no sleep she was truly impressive, "I will not have you intentionally provoking each other. I will not allow it."

"Of course Lieutenant Commander," Na'Toth brushed the multicolored fabrics of her jerkin, rounded her shoulders an continued, "But some matters require more immediacy than they do tact."

"It is good then that the Great Maker saw fit to gift you with an abundance of promptness rather than tact," Mollari laughed, "You waste my sleep over this trifle. This was no secret I had half a mind to declare a meeting myself at something resembling a reasonable hour."

"Indeed," grumbled the Drazi incredulously. He stood up and walked over to the pacing Centauri. The Drazi ambassador bent over so his face was within inches of Mollari's face. Flecks of spittle hit Mollari's face and coats, "And when did you intend to tell my government that you were conducting first contact with species surrounding Drazi space? We do not like this action Centauri, we do not like it at all."

"We violated no agreements, no territories, no treaties," Mollari raised a finger with each word, held up his hand and waved it in front of the Drazi's face. The Drazi ambassador looked like he would very much like break Mollari's fingers. It wouldn't be an unprecedented act in Drazi diplomatic history, "We have every right to conduct our business as we please provided that we don't break any treaties we have with your people. Outside of that you may yell your displeasure as loud as you like. Yell till you're blue in the face… or whatever color it is you people turn when you yell, but the Empire is under no obligation to listen to you."

Na'Toth chimed in, "I must insist that the Centauri allow for outside observers to oversee their negotiations with this new race. I wouldn't want the Centauri to promise anything imprudent by accident. Perhaps even offer territory that isn't strictly yours to give."

"You may observe them yourself Narn. My government has nothing hide, in fact we intend to meet with them on Babylon 5. Conduct business with them as you will," he smiled widely showing two enlarged canines, "In fact I'll go a step farther. I'll send all races of the Babylon 5 council a copy of our speculations on the long-range communication technologies used by this race," he smiled maliciously, "That should expedite your own efforts to communicate with them. I will send a highly detailed report over the new races speculated method of long communication including a transcript of all tachyon transmissions sent between the two ships."

Lennier smiled widely, "That is most generous of you Ambassador." Most ambassadors, even the Drazi, seemed to be placated by Londo's offer.

"Is that all then?" Susan looked around the room, "Does anyone have any objections to this?"

Na'Toth eyed the Centauri as though trying to figure out the trap in his words. After apparently finding none she sneered and said, "That would be acceptable."

"Fine," Susan rapped the gavel down in the ground, "I call this meeting to an end. I don't know about all of you but I'm looking forwards to getting some sleep in my own bed. Ambassador Mollari I would appreciate a word with you after the meeting finishes. If we're hosting this meet and greet I'm going to need to know more about these people than how to talk to them."

Mollari gave an exaggerated sigh and bowed his head slightly, "If you insist."

* * *

Daul was ushered into Sáclair's apartments by Preston, an aging and substantially ugly manservant of Sáclair's household. Sáclair was so greatful to be rid of Galut's odor that he didn't even protest when Preston informed him that his bodyguard would be expected to wait outside. The private apartments of Nathaniel Sáclair were surprisingly subdued and tasteful considering the man's fondness for the ornate and baroque. It was the Lady Annabelle Sáclair who's duty it was to oversee his household and thus the furnishings were sturdy and handsome but not gaudy. The walls were lined with paintings, tapestries and trophy cases, all of which were kept at a sufficient height to keep them out of the hands of Sáclair's many young children. As Preston led him to Sáclair's study he caught sight of small faces peeking out from behind doors and around corners. The Captain had fifteen children, five of which weren't bastards, born from his wife and concubines as well as the unborn heir growing in his wife's belly. It would be the first of his male children not born of a concubine.

Children amused Daul; there was no lying in them. He chuckled as a third door clicked shut when the child behind it realized the Inquisitor they were watching was staring back. Preston muttered in annoyance and pulled a ring of keys out of his jacket pocket, "The mistresses told the children that they were not to disturb you sir and they were to make themselves scarce when you arrived. It seems they still have a rebellious streak to them."

"I dare say that the fastest way to get them peeking out of doors was to forbid them to do so," Daul considered jumping around and yelling 'boo' at the next person to peek out at him. The child would probably die of fright, "I don't really mind."

Preston's face pinched into what might have been a smile on someone else but only managed to make him uglier, "I suppose it would at that."

Preston shoved his keys into the lock and twisted the handle of a cherry red door at the end of the hall. The tall doors swung open into a wide, richly furnished study lined with all manner of books and scrolls of all kinds. It vaguely reminded Daul of the library of Inquisitor Gaal, though with fewer jars of preserved fetal xenos along the wall.

"Hildy!" the voice of Sáclair boomed across the room, "Fantastic! You're here. Now we can get to business."

Sáclair stood at a table covered in maps and charts, surrounded by the command staff of the _Endless Bounty_ and by Magos Frist. He was supremely grateful to see the tall shape of Cairn at Kerrigan's left. Cairn walked up to Daul with arms crossed and gave him a piercing look. He pointed to the empty space behind Daul and let off a string of angry binary screeches. Daul rolled his eyes, "Cairn I can manage to walk down a corridor in the Captain's own household unguarded. The Ogryn is waiting outside. The butler asked him to wait at the door. He has a communicator if I needed him I would simply have called."

Magos Kerrigan interrupted Cairn's loud griping by turning to Sáclair and saying, "I must confess Captian it is highly irregular to prevent a man's bodyguard the ability to guard him," she waved at a broad shouldered servitor behind her, "especially considering the precedents you've set for others. Your rivalry with the Inquisitor seems to have overrode your sense."

"The Lady Sáclair is guilty of this offense I'm afraid. She doesn't allow Ogryn into the house. She seems to think they leave an odor behind. Well they do leave an odor behind to be frank. We force the ship's bonded Ogryn to bathe once a month and even that's a battle," he looked to Daul and considered the matter, "But I suppose I should make an exception for you Inquisitor. All joking aside while I appreciate your faith in the trustworthiness of my household even I am not without a guard at all times in my own house. The Amon Sui were my allies for far too long for me to have considered screening for their agents. My wife will tolerate the smell if she feels that it guarantees additional safely for our children, as will I for that matter." He paused as though considering employing Ogryn bodyguards for all his children.

Thinking of the foul smelling simpleton outside Sáclair's apartments Daul hastily said, "That's truly not necessary. I would not impose on the charity of your wife," and then changed the subject, "I apologize for my lateness. After the Lionhearts ceremonies some of the Belzafest colonists had questions for me."

"Really," Sácomer raised a meaty eyebrow, "I'd have thought they'd be avoiding you entirely considering the circumstances."

"Just the opposite I'm afraid," Daul ran his hand through his hair, wincing as he accidentally pressed down on cracked part of his skull, "They were so eager to have an opportunity to prove they weren't tainted by Faust they were all but climbing over each other to be examined. They seem to want me to check them over to validate that their faith in the Emperor and resistance against Faust meant something," he pulled a painkiller out of a tube in his pocket and swallowed it, "If I end up discovering a heretic or xeno-breed in their population we won't have time to toss them out the airlock. The Belzafesters will tear them apart with their bare hands."

Osma nodded and twirled his beards, "They have seemed surprisingly willing to allow my men access to all they brought with them. I was expecting a fight to have them surrender all weapons and munitions. Before I could even consider broaching the issue they'd turned them over to the duty officer along with the command codes for all the tanks they brought onboard."

"Well at least that's one thing more or less settled for the time being," Enzo was rubbing a small golden pocket watch between his thumb and forefinger. Worry was emanating from his mind so powerfully that Daul had to resist the urge to read the man's surface thoughts, "Good to have luck in at least one thing. Our survey teams found some potable frozen water in the asteroid belt but nowhere near enough for what we need. At least nowhere near enough that we can harvest before our water reserves run out."

"Indeed," Sáclair smoothed out a star chart that was laid on the table in front of him, "Mr. Sácomer, honored Navigator would you be so kind as to update the Inquisitor on the past few hours."

Sacomer nodded and turned to Daul, "We sent out an unencrypted distress signal as far as we could. It apparently had some success, or at least enough success," he licked his chops, "That is to say someone responded to it. Some three hours after sending the signal a ship showed up at the edge of local space. We made contact with a humanoid species that seemed peaceful enough. They have some limited ability for astropathic communication, at least enough to say 'we're friends don't shoot.' There was some," he cleared his throat, "difficulty in communicating with them when we tried to exchange languages."

"Difficulty," a haughty and wet voice ground out, "difficulty doesn't even begin to describe that disaster." Navigator Illrich could barely be recognized as human. Nearly eight hundred years old and the recipient of countless rejuvenation treatments he was as alien as any species Daul had ever met. He glowered at Sácomer and Calven with his three milky white eyes, "It's a minor miracle they didn't chose to start shooting."

"Patriarch we had no way of knowing that the astropath would override the short range transmitters nor that he would cause an adverse reaction in their xenos astropath," Zorn stated in a tone of sullen calm, "We've never known it to happen before."

"You drugged that astropath ten ways from sane and you're surprised he did something unexpected? Astropaths are people, not machines. Sometimes they chose to do things that don't make sense," Illrich waved his arms wildly, fanning his robes and looking distinctly bat-like, "You should have known better."

"The drugging of the Astropath was my fault honored Navigator Illrich," Sáclair interjected, "He did so on my orders and under my expressed supervision. Any fault in this situation ought to like squarely with me."

"I'll get to you once I'm done with him. You damn well should have known better too," the Navigator's face had gone purple with anger. They could almost see the blood rushing to parts of his face it usually did not flow. The third eye in the center of his forehead spun and twitched with anger.

"Navigator," Daul raised his hands palms outwards in placation. They could not afford a feud between the Navigators at the moment, "Under normal circumstances I would agree with you but under the current condition of the ship I'm not sure what other course of action we had. Sáclair has my full endorsement of this decision as do those who aided with it," Zorn's face scrunched up as though someone had fed him sour milk the idea of having Daul's support, "It was not a safe choice but it was a necessary one."

Donat nodded, "It wasn't a total loss. We have a location for some sort of neutral ground the local species make use of," he stuttered over the foreign words, "A station called bab-babi-baylon 5 It's apparently where the locals meet to conduct trade. It's possible it's a trap but I suspect they would have already attacked us," he pocketed the golden watch, "and it isn't as though we can afford to ignore it either way."

"A sad day when the servants of the Empire are forced to rely on Xenos," Sáclair shook his head, "But you're right there's nothing for it. I will not take a course of action that forces me to condemn loyal servants of the Emperor to dehydration and death if I can save them."

"We must sometimes make lesser concessions for the greater good," Daul admitted diffidently, "I'll sign a writ of pardon to help guarantee for the survival of your crew Captain. I give you my word."

Sáclair gave a pleased nod, "If you insist Inquisitor Hilder. "

"And what of payment," asked Sácomer, "Do we have any currency they'll take?"

"If they don't take precious metals and jewels I'll eat my hat," laughed Enzo, "Failing that we might be able to work something out by exchanging star charts and the like. Old ones mind you, ones with outdates warp storms."

"I will not surrender any of my secrets to these xenos," muttered Iino darkly as he eyed Magos Frist with slight suspicion, "And I suggest we avoid doing so if possible. I don't like providing xenos with any of the secrets of the Omassiah."

"Some outdated or inferior technologies wouldn't be inappropriate Ensigneer Iino," Kerrigan said brightly, "Especially if we can get relevant technologies in exchange. We still need metals and ceramics that are beyond our capabilities to fabricate on ship in order to repair the hull and without the proper exotic materials we can't even begin to hope to restart the backup plasma reactors."

Iino shot daggers at Kerrigan with his eyes but held his tongue. Even in disgrace Kerrigan outranked him within the hierarchy of the Cult of the Machine. He seemed to be in great pain as he said, "It's possible there may be some, lesser, secrets that would be worthy of exchange for the necessary materials for repairs. Provided we're sure we cannot simply take them from the surrounding systems."

"Ensigneer Iino," Donat chuckled in a friendly manner wholly incongruous with his stoic features, "We have half the mining equipment we'd need to extract the minerals from the surrounding systems in a year, let alone the few short days we have before the crew starts rioting for lack of water and food."

"Then we're settled? Good," Sánclair clapped his hands together, "Illrich, how long will it take for us to get to the meeting point?"

"Some ten to twelve hours depending on warp currents. The flows of the warp are surprisingly calm in this area," Illirch closed his bottom two eyes, "It's almost serene really. Yes, ten to twelve hours depending on the issues of time dilatation."

Ensigneer Iino nodded and began to speak. His voice was weak and choked from smoke inhalation. He'd been hurt badly fighting fires. "We should have the water reclamation systems running at full capacity by that time. If you can get the water from the xenos we ought to be able to purify it of all contaminants and bacteria."

"Actually speaking of bacteria," Hakam Danzig snapped his fingers, "I almost forgot to say this. Docere Medicus Faest asked me to remind you that our negotiation team will need to be fitted with full environmental hazard gear in addition to the standard inoculations package, at least till he's had an opportunity to immunize us to any local bacteria on the station. Air filters, closed seals, and the works."

"A wise decision," nodded Daul, "One that I would have suggested myself. How do we plan to communicate with the xenos?"

"They were kind enough to transmit some basic language codes and xenos science to us," Magos Kerrigan said the word 'xenos science' with mixed emotion, "It was easy enough to feed them into the ships logic engines for translation. For ship-to-ship communications we ought to be all right but I know you'll want to negotiate in person," she tapped at the communicator at her wrist, "Jak would you be so kind as to come in?"

The door to the study opened and an average man covered in augmentics walked in. His movements were a bit jerky and his lower lip twitched, as he constantly whispered to himself. He was a savant no doubt. The savants were a class of biologically and augmentically altered humans created with the purpose of increased mental storage and processing power. The process that created them gave them preternatural memory but had an unfortunate series of side effects and physical defects that came along with it. He stood there twitching mildly as Kerrigan turned to Daul, "Jak's command of languages ought to be more that sufficient for our needs. Jak Mert has been in my service for two years now as he underwent the pysical and mental transformations into a savant. I release him from my service and give him over to yours Inquisitor."

"My thanks Magos," Daul beamed as he looked to the savant. He hadn't had a free moment to think about replacing his lost staff and a savant to assist him with research would go a long way in making his life easier. His own prodigious psychic talent often let him sense the mood, flow and intention of other languages but he needed just as much time to learn them as anyone else. Time that they did not have.

"I'd planned to present his debt of service to you once the mission was over anyway as thanks for getting me in contact with the Captain," the Mago's expression brightened.

"Pardon me for distracting from the topic at hand Magos but we need to discuss something in private," Interjected Osma, "There's no rush but I do need a moment of your time Magos.

"Of course Mr. Osma," Kerrigan's cheeks crinkled into a smile, "I'm glad to be of service."

"Yes you two do that," Sáclair smiled, "While we're in the business of giving you things Inquisitor I want you to take our guest from the cell-block with you when you go over to the station. Him and his damn hounds."

"Very well," Daul nodded grudgingly. Taking as many disposables as possible was probably a wise choice, "That is probably for the best. We ought to activate the Dorn unit as well…Wait? When I go over to the station? Do you not intend to take part in the negotiations."

"I don't intend to leave the ship," Sáclair looked up from the table, "Not to enter an unknown and hostile territory. I will communicate through a supplicant-servitor, that ought to be more than sufficient." Daul flinched slightly. He disliked the meat puppets that were sometimes used for long-range negotiations en lieu of astropathic communications. Sáclair seemed not to notice Daul's discomfort as he stretched any yawned. Considering how many hours the Captain had been awake it was entirely possible he genuinely hadn't noticed, "If that's everything then I suppose this meeting is over and I must confess my bed is calling to me from even this distance."

Daul and the others filed out of the room.

* * *

"General… with all due respect. You're reassigning him. Reassigning him where?" Susan had only managed to get a few short hours sleep before she was once again roused by the sound of her link, chiming a gold channel message. She groaned and stood up from bed, she hadn't even had the energy to take off her uniform when she got back from the meeting. She wasn't even remotely well rested enough to be finding out that the station was getting a completely new commanding officer.

The hard faced General Hague ran his hand through a thick graying goatee and replied, "To the Mimbari home world, He'll be functioning as the first earth ambassador allowed permanent residence there. The President has been trying to find someone suitable and the Mimbari specifically requested Sinclair. "

"But why him?" Sinclair had proved to be a successful commander of one of the most politically difficult positions in the know galaxy. Reassigning him at this point seemed vastly premature.

"This information is strictly on a need to know basis," the general said in a tone that clearly emphasized she did not need to, "I've already briefed captain Sheridan on the situation."

"Captain Sheridan? John Sheridan?" Susan blinked in surprise.

"That's right I believe you know him."

"Yes sir I served under him at the transfer point off Io. He's a good man and a fine officer but… he's got to be a controversial choice," controversial wouldn't be the half of it. Sheridan was the only Earthforce officer to manage a military victory against the Mimbari during the Earth-Mimbari war, "If I may ask…"

"You many not. Any further questions will have to go through your new CO. Good day Lieutenant Commander." The transmission cut off abruptly leaving a dumbfounded Susan staring at the blank screen.

She looked to the clock. She'd gotten a grand total of two hours sleep that night and would soon go on duty, "Oh Khuyesos"

* * *

The unpleasantness of his job in warning the Earthers of the danger potentially presented by the Trigati was nothing compared to what he discovered in Delenn's quarters. He entered the Ambassadorial suite to discover Lennier kneeling and praying in front of a cocoon… a cocoon that could only possibly be one thing. A thing that he dreaded… Delenn had defied the orders of the Grey Council and had taken prophecy into her own hands.

Delenn had always been a loyal partisan to those who favored obeying the plans of the Vorlons. It was hardly a controversial view in the grey council, time and time again their Advice had proven to be more than adequate in advancing the Mimbari to the favored status they now enjoyed. But interpreting how to seek an end to prophecy and prepare for the coming war was a matter of great debate within the council. It was a matter that ought to have been resolved by a majority consensus of the Grey Council, yet clearly a matter that had been taken out of their hands.

There had been some concern for Delenn's stability and mental well being after the murder of Dhukat. She had been more bloodthirsty than anyone else on the Grey Council to start the war then at the flip of a coin had become the most ardent supporter for human protectionism and advancement. Was she making up for her past sins or had she simply cracked under the pressure of helping lead her people? There had once been a time where he had wished for her to lead the Grey Council but now he was not sure if he even wanted her to be part of it.

He whispered an oath, "In Valen's name… we are at the edge of destiny…"

The cocoon took up a large portion of the modest rooms given to the Ambassador for Mimbar. Lennier and Delenn had clearly tried to bring a Mimbari sensibility to the otherwise square and distinctly human space but it still had the underlying backwardness of Earther architecture to it. It was certainly not a space worthy of a member of the Grey Council in Hedronn's opinion. He disliked the station, disliked the humans, and disliked that he had to spend time away from Mimbar on this unpleasant errand.

He walked up and looked at the pod, "So she's done it hasn't she? She's in there? We told her to wait. Prophecy will attend to itself we told her."

Lennier nodded and turned his eyes to the floor rather than stare at a member of the Grey Council. He sighed, it would do him no good to take out his frustrations on the young man, "Now we are committed to the path. I have spoken with the other members of the council. The Trigati has been seen in this sector. If it should appear you will go to the humans and tell them what we have told you. It's time they knew the truth."

* * *

As Lieutennant Commander Ivanova walked into the Command and Control center one of the younger officers walked up to greet her, "Good morning, Commander about the new captain."

Susan looked at the young Earthforce officer and smiled. "Yes I would like a full honor guard present when his ship docks. We've barely got enough time."

The young officer cleared his throat, "He's here."

"What?" Screeched Ivanova.

"His Earthforce transport just docked. Apparently there was a miscommunication about the time," Susan didn't wait for the rest of his explanation before tearing out of the command center and running for an open transport tube. Customs was fortunately only a short trip from the Command and Control center. She tapped her foot nervously as the tube rumbled along. One more thing, there was always one more thing. The tube opened to blue sector customs and Susan sprinted to the diplomatic entrance.

Sheridan was standing just inside the entrance of the diplomatic customs center carrying a battered hard-side suitcase and leather briefcase. Susan grabbed a security officer by the hand and ran up to the commander. The somewhat bemused security guard followed her, standing just behind her and eying Sheridan with mild interest.

"Welcome aboard sir," she snapped off a hasty salute, "I'm authorized to surrender command of Babyon 5 to you at this time."

"Thank you Lieutenant Commander I accept," Sheridan said in a pleasantly pleased voice, "Uh, there seems to be a problem with the unloaders. Can I get my bags delivered to my quarters?"

"Of course," Susan nodded to the officer. The dark skinned woman grabbed the suitcases and walked in the direction of the transport tube Susan just left, "I assume you'd like to begin with a quick tour of the facilities?"

"Yes, absolutely!" Sheridan smiled brightly as he looked around. He seemed to be trying to soak in everything at once.

"Great, this way." Susan smiled and started walking away from customs. Sheridan followed her closely, "It's good to see you again sir, how was your flight?"

"Fine, they actually had fresh oranges on the transport. I haven't had an orange in almost two years. I used to dream about them. Grapes, nectarines, plums black ones," he waved his hands to emphasize his point, "not the red ones. I mean it's amazing what two years on the rim can do to you. I have a hunch I'll be spending a lot of time in hydroponics." He let loose a bark of a laugh, "On the way in I read the station reports, trying to catch up on everything. What's our status?"

They stopped briefly as a door opened letting a string of traders off a lift from green sector. Susan chewed her lip and said, "Chief of security is in critical condition in med lab. He thinks there's a conspiracy concerning the President's death. Ambassador G'Kar has mysteriously vanished. We've just been informed that we're soon to be visited by an as of yet unknown species that uses psychics for a phone call. The Narns are going to be livid when they realize Mollari's offer to provide them with long range communications tech can only work if they have a psychic. After two years we still don't know what ambassador Kosh looks like inside his encounter suit," she paused briefly unsure if she should proceed, "And ambassador Delenn is in a cocoon."

There was a moment of pregnant silence before Sheridan asked, "A cocoon? As in a moth or a Butterfly?"

"Yes sir," She raised her hand, "About yeah high."

Sheridan smiled and chuckled, "Interesting place you have here."

"Yes sir." Sheridan didn't even begin to suspect how 'interesting' the station could get.

* * *

The shuttle hummed with the sounds of the reactors powering it. It had been a good three hour since Sørian had flown from the bounty to the asteroid belt at the fringe of the system, ostensibly to assist in the effort to look for potable water. It was a simple gesture that allowed him to appear proactive in the eyes of the command staff and to have the privacy necessary to complete rituals outside the boundaries of the ship's hexegrammic wards. The wards that covered most of the ship were made with the specific intent of reinforcing the stability of real space to prevent warp incursions in transit. They also had the side effect of making it insufferably difficult to complete any rituals to the true gods.

Sørian took any opportunity to take his private ship out for "survey missions" and "diplomatic oversight" on behalf of the bounty in order to get outside the boundaries of the wards. Not that it seemed to be doing him any good today. He'd gone through a monumental effort to collect not one but two young girls from the crew and sneak them, bound and gagged, onto his ship before launch. And it seemed it would be all for naught.

Sørian looked down at the sacrificial altar for the third time since he'd made the sacrifice and wondered what he'd done wrong. It couldn't be the offering. A freshly slaughtered virgin's blood was always sufficient for gaining the attentions of a deamon of Slaanesh. It wasn't the altar. His shuttle was safely outside the range of he hexegrammic wards of the ship. The eight-pointed star was aligned properly in the middle of his fetishes and candles. He was in good standing with his patron. At least he believed he was, "So why can I only summon wisps and shades?"

It was infuriating. He'd tried two separate sacrifices and never managed to summon anything stronger than an insubstantial shadowy nothingness. The whispered and promised him greatness but could manage little else. He doubted he would even need the protection of the circle of salt to keep these worthless servants of his master away from him.

It was this area of space perhaps. There were uncommonly turbulent spaces in the warp where servants of the true gods walked at will so why not places where they dared not tread. But what would keep them from this part of the immaterial world. And why?

Perhaps he had entered the realm of one of the other patrons. A section of space could theoretically be dominated by one of the other four major powers or even one of the lesser gods of Chaos Undivided. He eyed the basin pool of blood. There was more than enough for another summoning. He needed answers, his patron would forgive him brokering a deal with one of the other gods so long as it wasn't with Khorn.

He flipped through the tome sitting on the table to his right. The blood dripped off his hands and soaked into the pages. They sucked up the blood greedily, the ink glowing brightly wherever it dropped. It was a dark sickly book, made from centuries of obscene ritual and perversity. Within it were the names of a million creatures to twisted to speak of only the least of which Sørian had been brave enough to contact. He stopped at a likely candidate and read to himself, "Tzzek'an'to'krax… yes a lesser creature of Tzeentch ought to do nicely."

He dipped his dagger into the pool of blood once more and dripped small droplets of blood into the circle of salt in the center of the room, "Thrice bound I call you, weaver of lies. Thrice bound I name you, deamon of the fates. Thrice bound I name you Tzzek'an'to'krax the profane. Thrice bound I summon you and done!"

It started as an insubstantial shape, a flickering blue wispy something. It billowed and grew and howled and sung till it grew into an twisted and avian figure twice as tall as a man. It's body was covered in shimmering and shifting feathers and iridescent robes that altered in impossible geometries of shape and color. Sørian gulped and looked down at his book. He had not summoned Tzzek'an'to'krax the impish teller of profane truth this was a daemon of the higher orders. A daemon whose name he did not know and might not be able to banish at will.

Sørian looked down to the circle of salt to reassure himself it was safely in place. It was. He looked back up at the creature being careful to avoid staring it in the eyes. Daemons could sometimes mesmerize the unwary with a look. A single misstep and he could be undone, "I greet you honored Herald of Tzeentch. How is it that I am favored by your attentions?"

The creature chortled and began to speak in a voice broken by shrill whistles and clicks. It seemed to have difficulty making human speech with it's beaklike mouth, "Knowledge is not given without payment lesser creature but I'll grant you a single boon. Curiosity man-child, curiosity brings me. You are a servant of the thirsting god beyond the well."

"Yes I serve the prince of excess," it was nothing to admit it. The daemon would know if he lied. They always seemed to be able to tell lies apart from truth, "I offer you this offering of virgin blood in exchange for information."

"No," the daemon tilted its head to the side. Somehow never moving its eyes as the rest of its head shifted, "I will not accept that offer. I am not some petty creature of the thirsting one. I am a weaver of fate, the taste of virgin blood holds no special meaning to me."

"Then what do you wish? My soul is not on the table at the moment," Sørian had not yet bartered with it and was unwilling to do so for anything less that daemonhood, "Would one of my true names suffice."

"I require neither," the creature's three eyes narrowed and multiplied, "I want to know what lies beyond the well."

"What lies beyond the what?" Daemons had an infuriating tendency to speak in riddles. At least this one hadn't picked up the insufferable talent of rhyming that so many of the lesser daemons were fond of.

"The veil of foresight! What lies beyond the well at the end of what is?" The daemon's face twisted into something cruel and angry, "Tell me or die! Tell me where the weaves go!"

"Creature you will bargain or be banished!"

"I spit on your pathetic magics! I spit on you!" The creature reached out to the barrier of light that surrounded it and tore through it with a single talon, "Tell me what lies beyond the well! Tell me where the weaves turn!"

Sørian started screaming out a chant of banishment, grabbing for the jar of blessed salt sitting on the table next to the book. He heaved the entire contents of the jar at the daemon and kicked the bowl of blood while screaming the rites of banishment. The daemon got within inches of his throat with a great clawed fist before fading into the insubstantial. It screamed, "Where do the weaves meet!" before disappearing with a crack of thunder and the smell of sulfur.

"Bloody hell," Sørian rubbed at his throat, "I'm going to need to start putting up stronger wards." The sooner they left this part of space the better, any daemon capable of just walking through a ward had to be an upper circle one. Upper circle daemons were dangerous to summon, even when they were of your own patron. It was an easy way to get killed or worse.

He chuckled to himself as he thought about it. If he was very lucky Hexathelidae was trying the same thing he was. He was willing to wager he was better at banishing and summoning than the bitch could ever hope to be.

* * *

John smiled as Susan led him through the doors. She seemed to be working very hard to show off her station to him, "And this will be your quarters. I hope it's satisfactory"

"Fine," John looked at the cavernous space, "fine. Certainly a lot bigger than what I'm used to," a wonderful thought popped into his head, "does this place come with a shower? I mean a real, live, honest to god shower with running water and everything?" It had been two years since his last _real_ shower rather than a vibe shower. Vibe showers killed all the bacteria but they somehow were never as good as the real thing.

Susan nodded, "The executive suites and command quarters all have showers with real live honest to god water. The rest get vibe showers our water reclamation system can't handle much more than that."

John grunted in approval, "A shower. I may come to like it here."

"Which brings me to something I've been wanting to ask you. It's, uh" she stumbled over the words in an effort to be discreet, "Kind of awkward."

"You've never been worried about being diplomatic before. Don't disappoint me by starting now," John still remembered the young officer who broke a man's arm for pinching her. The dockworker had been so embarrassed to be beaten by a woman he didn't even press charges.

"When I heard about the change in command I figured we'd get stuck with some high level bureaucrat or an admiral or an ambassador and…" Susan trailed off.

"And why me?" He nodded. John had been expecting this question sooner or later.

Susan smiled embarrassedly.

John's tone was friendly and understanding, "I wondered the same thing. Apparently I was the late presidents first choice to replace Sinclair in case anything happened to him. While commanding the Agamemnon I worked with many of the Non-Aligned Worlds, Centauri, Narns," John looked at his feet, "even a few Mimbari."

"That's what I was concerned about. I mean the Mimbari aren't exactly going to be thrilled to find out you're running Babylon 5," she played about with the interlink on her hand, "I hear they still call you the star killer."

"That was a long time ago, twelve years," John said in an entirely unconvincing tone, "Maybe they've forgotten about it by now."

Susan looked in disbelief. John chuckled, "Yeah I know. I don't believe it either. Well one thing for sure. I'll be relying on you pretty heavily these next few weeks." He sat down his desk. The chair was surprisingly comfortable, "Till I'm up to speed."

"Well it certainly couldn't be any worse than the last week. What with President Santiago's death and everything else," Susan's voice darkened. The death of Santiago was not at easy subject for Earthforce personnel.

"How's the crew handling it?" John queried.

"They're still pretty shocked. I don't think the reality of it has quite sunk in yet."

"And you?"

Susan stood up, walked to the middle of the room, and sat down opposite John. She looked surprisingly frail, "I don't know. It's just. I just keep seeing Earth Force One blowing up, over and over and over again in my dreams. I mean all my life I thought that I could handle everything, fix any problem," her face twitched, "When I saw that I just realized I couldn't do anything to stop it," she swallowed deeply to clear her throat, "I don't think I've ever felt so helpless."

"I know," John's voice softened, "I felt the same way."

"Ever since then the crew's needed me to be strong for them. And I've tried. I don't like to show weakness." Susan looked down, "I guess I get that from my father. But with the added madness of trying to run this place and the commander being called back to Earth and the Ambassadors yelling and carrying on."

John nodded in agreement. Susan continued, "I don't know I just hope I've done ok by them. Lets just say I'm very happy to see you."

"I appreciate that," John smiled, "And coming from you it means a lot."

"I should also mention that the crew is really looking forwards to meeting you. They've heard all about you and I think right about now they could all use something to smile about," Sheridan was very grateful that Susan already knew and liked him. It would save him the trouble of breaking in his second in command.

"Then I won't keep them waiting," Sheridan stood up and brushed off his lap, "I'll just grab a fast shower, we'll head up to Command and Control and I'll give them my good luck speech."

"Sir?" Sheridan smiled. Susan hadn't been there to hear him give it at the Io Station after all so she wouldn't have heard it before. Fantastic, it meant he had another person to hear it with fresh ears.

"It's the same speech I gave them when I took command on Io, on the Agamemnon, it's sort of my, uh, good luck charm," Sheridan chuckled "I always give it within twenty four hours of taking on a new assignment."

"Then I look forward to hearing it," Susan checked her watch, "Would you mind if I went to C and C I have to take care of."

"Oh of course, I'll see you there in twenty minutes."

* * *

"In Valen's name!" Hedronn's eyes widened in shock. Kalain couldn't be onboard an Earther station could he? It was insane.

"Kalain?" He yelled "Kalain! Wait!" He followed the warrior cast member round the corner. Strong hands grabbed him and held him by the throat, a three pronged claw pressed up against the main vein of his neck. He swallowed and said, "We do not harm our own kind. We never have."

"Perhaps it is time to start," grunted the deep voice of Kalain in a tone of utter scorn, "The Grey Council has betrayed us why should that matter now?"

"No one has been betrayed," Kalain did not know the truth. He could not know the terrible truth. There had been no betrayal at the battle of the line but to tell the truth was to undo the fabric of Mimbari society.

"No! No lies," spat out Kalain, "We have intercepted a message from the Humans to Mimbar. We know they have chosen Sheridan the Star Killer to lead this place. It is an obscenity."

"We protested," Hedronn gritted his teeth, "They ignored us."

"Satai Delenn, did she also ignore you?" Kalain chuckled.

Hedronn froze, briefly forgetting the claw at his throat, "What do you know?"

"We have supporters even among the council. They tell us that Sinclair is now on our world," Kalain's lip curled in distaste at the human's name.

"He is an Ambassador."

"So you say. But the Grey Council never tells anyone the whole truth. Does it? If you value your life leave now" he shoved Hedronn away and ran, "While you still can."

* * *

Doctor Franklin smiled as he heard the footsteps behind him. Susan was surprisingly sweet despite her best efforts to have a hard exterior, "Good Afternoon Lieutenant Commander."

"How'd you know it was me?" Susan clucked her tongue on her teeth.

"Well it's 2:45. You always come at 2:45, see how he's doing," Franklin looked into the long term patients ward to the balding man lying in the crash unit.

"So, how is he doing?" Susan's said in a worried tone.

Franklin sighed and took on the clinical tone of a doctor, "Still no change. We managed to stabilize his condition. Dropped in as may regent packs as we think his body can handle. Now all we can do is wait and see if he comes out of the coma." He shook his head, "Could be hours, days, weeks."

"Years, never?" Susan's smiled but her eyes were distinctly cold.

"Yeah," the idea of never seeing Garibaldi again was as painful to Franklin as it was to Susan. Franklin missed the man's sarcastic whit and painfully stupid jokes. Garibaldi was a man who trusted nobody but could be trusted by everybody.

"So all we can do is keep him hooked up like this? What forever?" Susan pressed her hand to the glass. It fogged up from the heat of her hand.

"Well the human body is an amazing thing," Franklin sighed, "It can cure itself or it can simply decide one day that the world is too painful to deal with and won't co-operate no matter how hard you heal it. That debate is going on somewhere in Garibaldi's body, right now. Just going to have to wait and see who wins."

Susan rubbed her hands together, "Well then I'll say a prayer for him tonight."

Dr. Franklin chuckled, "He's agnostic."

Susan rolled her eyes, "Then I'll say half a prayer."

* * *

Sheridan looked around the CnC at the expectant and smiling faces of the command staff as they stood at attention. He cleared his throat, "As you were. When I was twenty-one I visited Tibet I went to see the new Dali Lama. You do that sort of thing when you're twenty-one and the son of a diplomatic envoy. We had a simple meal. Rice, raisins, carrots," he raised the index finger of his right hand and waved it, "Steamed, not boiled. And green tea. When it was over he turned to me and asked me 'do you understand" he shrugged his shoulders and pursed his lips in confusion, "I said no, I didn't. 'Good beginning,' he said, 'you'll be even better when you begin to understand what you do not understand."

The command staff laughed politely. He smiled and continued, "After reading some of your reports I begin to understand what I do not understand about Babylon 5. But I couldn't wish for a more capable and skilled group of people to learn from. It was an early Earth President, Abraham Lincon, who best described our current situation. He said…"

He looked down to as one of the command staff tapped her earpiece to silence a warning from the security desk, "Is there a problem?"

"I'm sorry to bother you sir but I've got security on the link," She shrugged apologetically, "They've got a Mimbari demanding to see you. He won't say what it's about only that it involves that safety of this station. He say's it's absolutely urgent."

"Ah well," he looked around the room, "Um, we'll get back to this later. There's plenty of time for speeches. Carry on."

* * *

Donat stood next to the great throne. Sáclair had finally retired to his apartments in order to sleep after their meeting with the Inquisitor, leaving Donat in command of the bounty. The Captain desperately needed the rest, had he insisted on trying to command the ship for another eight hour shift he would have forced him into bed on medical leave. Donat had no doubt in his mind Faest would be more than formidable enough to force even the incorrigible Sáclair to get some rest.

He would have done so a shift earlier but for his daughter, Donat was not of Damascan blood but of the Amon and was thus bound by monogamy. His wife, lovely though she was, had become unable to bear children after complications with her first pregnancy had required a hysterectomy after she gave birth. It was thus that Donat's daughter was the only child he would ever have to his name. A better child he could never hope for though. Bonafila was as clever and pretty of a girl as he'd ever met. Kind to other children and as apt a student as the schola had ever had. She was the apple of her father's eye.

She'd been caught by a stray bit of shattering bulkhead fell into a coma during the fighting. She would have died except for the quick actions of David Sáclair. David, one of Sáclair's eldest bastard children wasn't forthcoming for exactly why he'd been in the merchant's quarter with his daughter. There had been a number of situations involving his daughter as of late that had featured David prominently. He'd grudgingly granted David permission to watch over his daughter and talk to her in her comatose state, provided of course that the girl's mother was present at all times. That boy would be trouble.

He put his watch back in his pocket and pushed thoughts of Bonafila to the back of his mind. He tapped his communicator, "Navigator Illrich, have you plotted in a course to Babylon 5 yet?"

Navigator Illrich stood at the far end of the great hall just at the edge of sight on a chair at the highest tier of the astropathic choir. Numerous servants and servitors scurried about on the lower tiers overseeing the astropaths and typing in calculations and co-ordinates. The batlike face of Illrich nodded and he responded over the link, "We are prepared to go to the warp. Hexegrammic wards are at full power."

Donat nodded in satisfaction, "Good, the last of our fighters just docked," he reached over to the throne and flipped the button for the Hololithic communicator, "Sácomer take us to warp."

The great mass of the _Endless Bounty_ shot away from the sun and towards the edge of space, to a spot where the material world was closer to the warp. The navigators had never been able to properly explain to him why some places were closer to the warp than others. To them it was like explaining why water was wet, it simply was. Donat switched the great hololith in the middle of the room to an exterior view and watched.

There was a strange beauty in the great warp tears. The shifting hues had a distinct majesty to them. Odd, that the edges of this warp tear were a swirling blue rather than the purples he associated with warp tears, "Navigator should we be worried about the change in color of this tear?"

The navigator scoffed, "We're in the most peaceful patch of warp space I can recall. If anything we should start hoping they start being all blue if they indicate favorable conditions like these."

"If you say so honored Navigator," Donat switched off the hololith, "You have greater experience with these matters than I," he sighed and looked at the chronometer, "Mr. Sácomer, take us in."

Donat felt the cool sinking plunge of entering warp-space and listened to the chatter of the duty officers. He eyed the throne mildly, technically speaking he was allowed to sit in it when the Captain was off duty but custom dictated that he did not. Even so he could not help but feel those cushions looked distinctly comfortable as his back ached from the effort of standing. No, it was not his place and it would never be.

* * *

Human, this entire station was too insufferably human. They should have wiped them all off the face of the universe, if for no other reason than to stop them from making insufferably illogical stations like this one, He'd been wandering green sector for the better part of an hour trying to find Ambassador Delenn's quarters.

"Hold on, that area is restricted to diplomatic staff," apparently security had spotted him. Why now did they stop him? They had been all but willing to ignore his movements everywhere else on green sector. Why would they notice a mimbari walking towards the Mimbari Ambassador's suite? How could a human even tell two Mimbari apart?

Kalain bit back a bitter response turned to the grey suited officer, "I'm sorry, I seem to be lost. I'm looking for Brown two."

"Oh you're way off. You want the core shuttle it's back there," the security officer shrugged and pointed in the opposite direction from where Kalain was walking.

Kalain nodded, he could always double back later once the human went away. There was plenty of time for him to do what he must, "I see, thank you I'll be on my way."

Kalain tried to walk past but was stopped by the officer's outstretched hand, "After I see you're identicard."

Kalain pulled a card out from his pocket. It was outdated but it would serve his purposes. The security officer inserted it into a card reader. After a few seconds it buzzed loudly and flashed red, "Hey wait a minute this card is," Kalain kicked him in the stomach and knocked him unconscious before he had the chance to finish talking.

* * *

The ship's brig was at the edge of the ships hull just inside the bulkhead inside of a part of the ship that was just barely livable for organic life because of the ambient radiation from the secondary plasma reactors. The cells were cramped and dark. The guards were mostly members of Osma's staff who'd proved to be too reactionary or too unstable to trust in the more populous areas of the ship. The detention cells weren't intended for long term care only temporary storage till the ship reached a planet with a properly unpleasant justice system in place.

Dogmatic loyalty was valued a great deal more than competence so a few of the ships Ogryn had been trusted with the role of patrolling the cells to make sure none of the prisoners escaped. Not that there were many prisoners left in the cell block, explosive decompression had killed a quarter of the ship's prison populations on the lower decks. When he'd reached the 53rd level detention block the desk clerk had merely looked up at the hard faced Inquisitor flanked by the Skitarii, the Ogryn, and the Savant before saying, "Sáclair said to expect you. He's in cell seven. If you kill him hit the button for the cleansing servitors. They're going to have to clean the mess not me. And if you don't kill him at least make the bastard not able to talk, he never shuts his beak. He doesn't even sleep for Throne's sake!"

The barred door buzzed then opened wide, creaking on its hinges. Jak twitched and fidgeted in place. He was an odd man. The process that made him into a repository of knowledge seemed to have made him a bit senile. He certainly started conversation in the strangest of ways, "Cannibalistic rituals are common within the Empire in spite of being near universally declared to be heresy by the Cult of the Emperor. If someone were to eat part of me I would prefer it were an arm."

Daul chuckled as he walked down the corridor looking through the barred windows at the huddled figures chained to the wall, "Good to know. I'll bear that in mind."

"An arm is the easiest part to replace augmentically. Esthetically and physically it is the least complex appendage to have full dexterity in after replacement," his eye twitched, "And it seems that there is a socio-cultural preference for augmentic arms in most societies. Having a mechanical arm is somehow seen as a sign of masculinity and virility. Having an augmentic leg is difficult to become accustomed to unless you've replaced both legs. Even then, they are rarely seen by others and are thus impractical for status. So I'd like it to be an arm."

Cairn's shoulders were shaking so hard Daul felt they might be in danger of cracking under the pressure of the Skitarii's laughter. Galut seemed to have missed the joke entirely, he was eying the prisoner's food inside their cells with wrapped interest. Daul was grateful for the narrow bars else he suspected the Ogryn would simply have reached in and stolen a bowl of gruel, "I've always been a big believe in keeping all ones limbs."

"I agree sir," Jak wobbled a bit, "But won't he demand a price of flesh from you?"

Ah, so that was what this was. It seemed even the Savant's were not immune to the power of rumor and fear mongering about xenos, "I wouldn't worry. Vira'capac's price was already paid long ago. We can trust his loyalty to his debts owed even if we can't trust him."

Cairn warbled unconvinced, he wasn't fond of the xenos.

"We need as many guns with us as we can have," he sighed, "And having a xenos with us will give us an air of legitimacy, even pluralism that might make trading substantially easier," he turned to the door marked with a massive VII, "Here we are."

A reedy whistling clicking sound was coming from inside the cell, avian and shrill. As Daul pressed the combination into the keypad and pushed the door open the whistling clicks subsided to a pleased trilling purr. A beam of light from the corridor shone into the inky blackness of the cell, highlighting a lean avian shape leaning against the wall. The xenos wore a simple white linen robe above mottled flesh. Razor sharp quills jutted out from every joint and poked through the linen. Quills Daul knew all to well to be full of a paralytic venom capable to stunning a man for hours. Vira'capac licked his fingers and clicked his beak loudly, "I am needed?"

Daul noticed idly that Vira had grown an opposable thumb, "More needed that you are in this cell. Tell me Vira'capac, how many of your cell mates did you consume?"

The yellow-skinned kroot crooned in what might have been a laugh, "Calm your mind and your fears. They only tossed the corpses to me after they were dead, as you no doubt instructed them to. A tool for getting obedience from prisoners fear is. A foolish one but a powerful one."

"You'll pardon me if I take the moral imperatives of someone I've watched eat men's still beating hearts with a grain of salt," Daul said dryly. The Kroot insisted upon trying to correct what he believed to be Daul's moral failings, though he was careful never to do so in public. He'd never entirely understood the social dynamics of Kroot culture but it seemed it was the duty of lesser members of the brood to question all decisions made by the Shaper, even if they obeyed his orders implicitly, "You'll soon be leaving his cell."

"Am I finally to die by your hand Inquisitor?" Vira'capac crowed hopefully.

"No," Daul shook his head, "Not by mine."

The Kroot's expression darkened, "Then leave me in peace to die of age like a coward. My brood is dead yet I live, unable to breed, unable to pass on what I am, what I have gained. Kill me before I gain more that I cannot share with the greater part of who we were. Kill me so that they might consume me and I might become them."

"I gave my word to your Shaper Vira'faola," Daul started.

"I know the name of my own brood father!" Screeched Vira'capac with contempt, "And I know the value of an Inquisitor's word. You were not the first of your order to contract the broodchildren nor will it be the last. You are an order founded on lies, dependant on lies, and designed to master lies. End me as you should have done years ago!"

"No," Daul shook his head, "I chose not to end you and I chose not to leave you be. You are still in my service Vira'capac, you will be in my service till you die an honorable death. I can at least promise your death will be worthy of the brood consuming you."

Vira'capac hissed and flared his quills.

"You will be accompanying me to a xenos port of call," Daul ignored the Kroot's posturing. The Inquisitors mouth twitched as an amusing thought popped into his mind, "You and your hounds."

The quills at the back of Vira'capac's head twitched, shaking the beads and bangles looped through them. His nostrils flared and he trilled in resignation, fingering the necklace of various humanoid bones around his neck. He had not seen his hounds in the better part of the year., "Very well Inquisitor. Very well."

* * *

Sheridan stared at the haughty Mimbari standing across from him. The Mimbari had never been especially friendly to him and many outright despised him but he was unused to meeting one who seemed to ignore him. Hedronn didn't look at Sheridan so much as he stared through the Earthforce officer. It was unsettling, the Mimbari's tenancy to talk around Sheridan rather than towards him was equally annoying, "His name is Kalain. He was second in command of one of our flagship cruisers during the war with your people. He has not been seen since the end of the war."

Susan looked to Hedronn with an expression of puzzlement, "Why do you think he's here to cause a problem?"

"I have my reasons. I would not be brining this to you otherwise," Sheridan hated the Mimbari flair for misdirection without telling a lie, "If you will arrange to have him apprehended I will have him picked up by others and conveyed to Mimbar."

Hedronn nodded as though the matter was finished and turned as though to leave. Sheridan bristled but surpressed the frustration at being given an order on his own station by a Mimbari bureaucrat. He smiled brightly and asked, "You say he was second in command of a Mimbari Cruiser. Which one?"

"I don't see what that has to do with this," Hedronn was especially talented at misdirection. It was just as well Sheridan could play the 'clueless human' card quite well.

"Was it the Trigati?" Hedronn froze and went silent. Sheridan suspected he was trying to find a way to answer Sheridan's question without lying.

Susan turned to Sheridan, "What's the Trigati?"

"It is not something we like to talk about," Hedronn reluctantly started to speak, "At the end of the war when our ships were ordered to surrender one of our war leaders Sinoval took his own life rather than obey and became a martyr to his own crew. Kalain assumed command and as a final act of protest they and the cruiser disappeared into self imposed exile."

Sherian nodded, that made sense, "Over the years we've heard rumors of a Mimbari cruiser sighted where it shouldn't been. We always figured it was the Trigati but we've never been able to prove it."

"They believe that they have been betrayed by their own world," shot a keen glance at Sheridan, "And yours. Kalain's presence could indicate they mean to come out of retirement."

Sheridan breathed deeply and stood up, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. There was still something that made no sense to him about Hedronn's story, "Something I don't understand. You said you're with the Mimbari government, the Ministry of Culture?"

"Yes that's right." Hedronn nodded slightly.

"So how does someone in the Ministry of Culture know a high ranking member of the warrior cast well enough to recognize him twelve years later?" Sheridan walked up to Hedronn and stared him directly in the eyes.

"I would answer your question if I recognized your authority," his mouth twisted at the word authority. "Unlike your predecessor my government was not consulted on your appointment."

Sheridan gave up the pretense of politeness, "The President feels the Mimbari had too much influence over an Earth outpost. Times change."

"And the day that a man such as yourself is given a position of this importance is a dark day indeed," Hedronn's voice grew harsh, "We lost some of our best warriors because of you and we do not soon forget such things."

He let that hang in the air before continuing, "If there is a doom on this station it is because you brought it here."

Sheridan watched him storm out of the room before turning to Susan, "Well he's grey council he's gotta be. Only someone in the Grey Council would had contact with someone that high in the Mimbari warrior caste," he shook his head, "They do not normally mix. You are right. They're not happy to see me here."

"They're a prideful people and the Black Star was their flagship." Susan seemed to be taking this in stride.

Sheridan grunted and smiled, "That's why it made a good target."

"How did you take her out? I've always heard it was some sort of new maneuver but I've never heard the specifics."

"There wasn't much style or finesse involved," he closed his eyes as he remembered, "She was huge. Monstrous, we tried everything but none of our weapons would lock on to their ships. Some kind of stealth technology," He shuddered as he remembered it.

Dark memories from worse times in his life shot into his head. Ships burning, worlds in ruins, millions dead, and nothing anyone could do to stop the Mimbari assault. It had taken nearly ten years to come to terms with it, "So, I hit on the idea of mining the asteroid field between Jupiter and mars. A fusion bomb doesn't have to lock onto anything if it's close enough. We took out the Black Star and three of their heavy cruisers before they could escape. It was the only real victory we had in the whole damn war and I am not about to apologize for it."

Susan shifted uncomfortably

Sheridan ran over what Hedronn had said in his head" Kalain feels his world has betrayed him. If that's true wouldn't your first target be the representative of that world?"

Susan's eyes widened and she reached for her link, "Delenn…"

* * *

Lennier didn't notice that there was anyone else in the room with him till he heard the sound of a pulse pistol charging. He turned around in shock to find himself facing a cruel faced warrior cast member.

"Get up," grunted the warrior. Lennier stood at the ready, striking up a pose of the religious cast's fighting form and placing himself between the gun and Delenn. The warrior stared furiously beyond where Lennier at Delenn's cocoon.

"She's in there isn't she?" The warrior screamed in fury. He waved his pistol in Lennier's face, "More aside. Move aside!"

Mimbari did not kill Mimbari but this warrior seemed to have lost his mind entirely. It must be Kalain, or someone else from the Trigati. He would not allow harm to befall Delenn. Delenn was the most wonderful woman he'd ever met in his life and some deranged, gun-toting, sociopath would not be allowed to touch her on his watch.

He would die for her if he had to. Lennier swallowed and started to recite the rites of conclusion to himself, preparing himself for the end. Members of the religious cast were supposed to accept their own death as they did their own life but Lennier would have been lying to say he was not supremely pleased when the door opened revealing a handful of well-armed security officers.

"Freeze!" a half dozen officers pointed PPGs at the back of Kalain's head.

A tall man walked into the room wearing an Earthforce uniform, "Put the gun down! Put the gun down and we won't hurt you."

Lennier relaxed and stared Kalain in the face. It was time for this to end, "If you are going to kill me then do so. Otherwise I have considerable work to get do."

Kalain smiled amusedly and handed his weapon to the officers. They cuffed him and frog marched him out of the room, pointing their PPGs deep into his ribs to keep him from struggling.

The Earthforce officer walked up to Lennier. Lennier eyed the pips on the human's collar and the way the Lieutennant Commander seemed to be deferring to him. He sighed, he'd hoped rumors of Sinclair's reassignment had been exaggerated, "You are the new commanding officer."

"Captain John Sheridan Earth Force," Oh in Valen's name what were the human's thinking sending the Star Killer to a place of diplomacy? He would ruin the place within the month.

"Lennier of the Third Fane of Chudomo," he would not disgrace his clan by hiding it, even from the Star Killer.

Sheridan eyed Delenn's cocoon in curiosity and tired to enter. Lennier tensed up and moved in front of him. The sheer cheek of entering farther into Delenn's private rooms without permission from Lennier, "Ambassador Delenn is indisposed at the moment," Sheridan continued to examine cocoon apparently oblivious to his rudeness, "Perhaps you would come back later. Much later."

Sheridan smiled embarrassedly and nodded, "Of course."

Lennier watched him leave before sitting down to meditate on what had just happened. For some reason he could not help but feel like Delenn was staring at him disapprovingly for his harsh words.

* * *

Magos Frist looked down at the two bodies sitting on the steel tables of the coroner's office with clinical interest. They were still possessed of the features of youth, though the redhead was covered in substantially more augmenters than the brunette. She had known them of course. There wasn't any member of Tech-cults on the ship she did not know. But she had assumed they'd been killed in the decompression of the docks. There were many unaccounted for members of the crew who'd most likely been lost that way. She sighed, "They were tech-priests alright."

Osma chucked, "The mechandrites gave that away Magos. Still it's procedure that I ask the next of kin to come and identify their bodies. You were the closest thing I could think of for these two."

"I'm surprised you didn't just bring them down to the service we conducted earlier today," Kerrigan ran her hand over the face of the redheaded boy, "They should have been properly preserved in the afterlife."

"Normally I would Magos but I suspect foul play," Osma held his pillbox hat between his hands, "I can't find the cause of death and they were found in one of the cremation chambers. Someone not from the church apparently has a key to the blasted chambers. Hell they would have been cremated long ago of the flaming things hadn't gone up the spout on us after the last fight. I've ordered some of my men to start camping outside the cremation chambers. I don't want to know how many bodies were dumped there before we caught these two."

"Cremation chambers? With their agumentics still attached?" Kerrigan's eyes widened in shock, "They were most certainly not put there by adepts of the machine god."

"I thought at first that maybe a crewman found their bodies and put them in he chambers as the fighting was going on. They crew isn't exactly expert on the rites of the Techs but then I found this," he held up a report in his hand, "It's their duty roster. The last thing I can confirm they showed up for was checking the plasma readouts for the main cannons and then nothing. I can't find a single one of their duties they showed up twelve hours prior to the invasion of Belzafest."

"Damn," Kerrigan swore, "And you're not sure how they died?"

"The Coroner was afraid to do an autopsy. Hell he wasn't even sure how to do one even if I'd allowed him to try," Osma laughed, "He was afraid the might trip some failsafe and blow himself up."

"Its not as impossible as you might think Mr. Osma. I have systems to that affect to protect my secrets, and they were more than capable of making similar ones," she looked down at them, "But I can save him the trouble. You see this notch right here? It's an intravenous nutrient feed line. They're quite common for priests who've given up having a digestive system," she picked up and pinched the cable revealing a tiny black blemish imperceptible to normal human eyes, "it's been punctured. I suspect someone fed poison into the feed lines. I'll have to analyze it to be sure but I feel confident that it was something quick acting, a small mercy at least."

"Amon Sui saboteurs?" Osma spat on the ground, "Damn, I was afraid of that. They were quiet for the past few weeks but I knew that was more about them lying low than them having given up. "

"May I see the duty roster?" Kerrigan reached out with a mechandrite.

"Of course," he handed it over to Kerrigan, "I'd appreciate any help you can give me. I don't really understand enough about the Ad-Mech to make a complete investigation into the matter without your advice."

"No, I don't suppose you would at that," Kerrigan's eyes flitted from line to line. Most of the duties given to the two priests hand been standard maintenance, none of it spectacularly important and nearly all of it was shared between multiple priests to ensure it got done in a timely fashion, "I'd have to suspect the Amon Sui partisans were just sowing chaos. Proving that they can attack at any time, it's not as though they have much in the way of resources to do a lot else. They were hardly given… any…." her eyes stopped and she felt a feeling of dread crawl up her spine, "Mr. Osma, can you say without a doubt that these men died before completing any of the other duties on this list."

"Reasonably so," Osma nodded and positioned his pillbox hat so that it covered the bald patch on the crown of his head, "We got a time stamp off the door longs for the crematorium. Not the main logs, mind you, they'd tampered with those but there is a secondary log in a redundant system that we checked. Or I should say your boys checked, Tech-Adept Tyan was of great assistance to me."

"I'll pass along your compliments when I see him next. If he's to be trusted, and his work usually is, this is troubling. Mr. Osma… these were the tech priests who's job it was to activate the Inquisitor's Arco-flagellant," Kerrigan looked down at the paper in confusion, "But I know for a fact that the Dorn unit was on Belzafest with the Inquisitor and used to great effect. The attempt at sabotage clearly failed…so who was it that activated it? And why?"

* * *

The interrogation room of was a small octagonal space with a couple of alcoves for the guards to stand in with a table in between them and the prisoner. Kalain sat shackled to the floor and staring straight ahead, smirking slightly. John leaned in and got close to the Mimbari's face, "Let me get this straight. A high ranking member of the Mimbari warrior caste who no one has seen in nearly twelve years suddenly appears and for no apparent reason breaks into Ambassador Delenn's quarters gun in hand." John paced back and forth around the room, "Now if you were looking the Mimbari tourist bureau, you were just a little off course. Wouldn't you say? But the curious thing is, you don't finish the job," he continued his pacing around the room looking briefly at the two officers eying Kalain with their hands close to their PPGs, "You could have killed both of them and been out of there in two minutes. Instead we find you standing there, practically waiting for us."

Kalain sneered, "Everyone knows Mimbari do not kill Mimbari."

John rounded on him, slamming his palms against the table with a smack. His hands throbbed from the force of it, "Then why are you here?"

"Perhaps everyone is wrong," the Mimbari's voice dripped with venom.

"Maybe you never intended to kill them at all," John considered the series of illogical events. Kalain was up to something, "Perhaps something else is going on."

"Perhaps you are the problem."

"What's that supposed to mean," John glowered at Kalain till he felt the firm pressure of Susan's hand pressing on his shoulder. His second in command shook her head.

"Captain, we're not getting anywhere. I suggest we wrap it up for now and try again tomorrow."

"No…one last thing," John eyed Kalain, "I'm told that after the death of your commanding officer you took command of a Mimbari War Cruiser… but if you're here where's your ship?"

Kalain simply stared and smirked. John saw white and quickly exited the room. If he didn't leave soon he would start pummeling the warrior caste member in his insufferably smug face. That would be satisfying but wouldn't accomplish anything. Susan sensed his mood and said nothing as they walked out of the brig and down the corridors of blue sector.

A familiar voice rang out from behind him as soon as he walked out, "Captain, please wait captain!"

He turned around to see Mr. Lennier, the assistant to Ambassador Delenn, was rushing towards them. He winced and prepared himself for another Mimbari verbal assault. The small Mimbari bowed deeply when he reached them, "Captain! I apologize if I was rude earlier. There is something we need to discuss, especially in light of Kalain's presence. It concerns the reason you were sent here, the relocation of Commander Sinclair and the reason we surrendered at the Battle of the Line."

Well, when it rains it pours.

* * *

Abbas adjusted the brown robe for a third time since he put it on. The robes of a novice were meant to show the humility and respect for the higher members of the orders of the machine, they were symbols of the greater society of the Omassiah. They also itched very badly. Abbas, as a son of Sáclair, was used to the softness of velvet and silk not the course fibers of wool used for the robe. He resisted the urge to scratch at his back looked at himself in the mirror of his room for the fifth time since he put it on.

In spite of being nowhere near as fine as the clothing he was used to he could not help but feel that the tech-novice's robes he wore were the most impressive thing he'd ever owned. He raised his hand in a mechanical fashion and pointed it at his reflection in the mirror pretending it was one of the augmentic concealed weapons of the tech-priests. It was about midway though making machine gun noises with his lips at imaginary pirates that he noticed that there was someone behind him in the room, someone biting down on their lip to silence giggles, his half-sister Ami.

"Brother, I suspect that vanity is one of the things the Adeptus Mechanicus try to weed out of their members," she brushed back honey blonde curls and walked over to him. She reached out and straightened the collar of his cowl, "And I suspect they don't tuck their hood into the back of their shirt either."

Abbas jerked and reached behind him. When he discovered his hood in the proper place he glared sullenly at Ami who only giggled in response, "I'll have you know I intend to be the best tech-priest there ever was, maybe even the Fabricator General on Mars!"

"Dream big little brother," she hugged him and ruffled his hair, "You're a Sáclair and the Sáclair do not do things by half measures. I think we'd be cross with you if you didn't plan to change the universe," she looked down at him, "but I suspect you'll have to grow a few inches before they let you run a Titan."

Abbas laughed. Ami was fond of calling him the runt of the litter, in spite of being a good three inches shorter than he was. She was older than he by a good three years and had gotten in the habit of helping mother him early on. The Lady Sáclair insisted that the legitimate children of their father help raise the bastard children to ensure there was no jealousy between them. It wasn't a perfect solution but it certainly helped. Ami was his favorite sister by far. He would miss living with her when he moved in with the other novices, "I'm sorry Ami, I was coming to say goodbye to you before I left."

"You were going to say goodbye to me if you ever pried yourself away from your own reflection you mean," she squeezed his shoulders, "Don't worry little brother, we're all proud of you and happy for you. Well all of us but the heir apparent and till mother gives birth to him his opinion doesn't matter. You're still going to be able to visit at free times and on holidays, the Magos Kerrigan promised it."

"I know but I'll miss you all terribly," He felt his eyes tearing up a bit.

"Hey, hey, no tears," she wiped his cheek with her thumb, "This is a good thing, remember," she got a stern expression, "Now go and say goodbye to the rest of your siblings. They're in the den waiting with a cake, we'd have grabbed you earlier but Isaac got distracted by trying to spy on the inquisitor. He got the backside of mother's hand for his troubles too. Now come on, I want to eat cake," she laughed, "And try to act surprised."

* * *

Lennier looked especially uncomfortable, even smaller and more fidgety than he did normally on the wide couch of John's office. He licked his lips and began to speak in a slow measured tone as though he was delivering a lecture. John listened to every word with fascination, "After three years, the holy war that begin when our leader was killed by an Earth explorer division was almost over. To avenge Dhukat's death we had pursued your forces all the way back to your homeworld. The few surviving Earth ships that had been were ordered to defend your world at any cost were not an obstacle. The Grey Council had come to oversee our final victory over the earth forces. They took Sinclair on board their ship, at first he was tortured but then he was scanned. And they discovered….they were horrified to find it out but it was true."

Susan shook her head and said the question that was at the forefront of John's mind, "What was discovered?"

Lennier swallowed and looked up as though considering how to word his response, "It is our belief that every generation of Mimbari is reborn in each following generation. Remove those souls and the whole suffers. We are diminished. Over the last two thousand years there have been fewer Mimbari born into each generation. Those who are born do not seem equal to those who came before. It is almost as though our greater souls have been disappearing. At the battle of the line we discovered where our souls were going. They were going to you. Mimbari souls were being reborn, in part or in full, in human bodies.

Susan blanched, "So you stopped the war in order to avoid harming your own souls?"

"Yes. But the council knew that our people and yours were not ready for this information. It could unravel our entire society. So we could not tell our generals the reason for the surrender. We had all memory of the examination erased from Sinclair's mind and we let him go. It has been our secret. Now it is yours. It must be kept." So, that was why they'd ended it. That was why they'd surrendered. If they'd called for a truce of some sort the Humans would have questioned why but nobody bothered to worry why they'd won a war.

Susan shook her head in confustion, "Then why break the silence now? I mean why tell us?"

"Because changes are coming," Lennier seemed to be hinting at something important, "Commander Sinclair was the first, there will be more."

John's link went off and the looked down, "Sheridan."

A garbled voice played out of it, "Captain we've got something major coming through the jump gate. It's a Mimbari cruiser. Her gunports are open and targeting systems are online. She's on an attack vector."

John and Susan looked at each other, stood up and sprinted towards the CnC. The commanding officer's office was placed directly above it specifically so that when these sort of situations happened he would be able to get to the CnC in short order. It didn't make every second they spent sprinting to the command center feel any less like an eternity. John knocked over two officers and a Brakiri Ambassadorial attendant in his hurry.

Huffing and puffing from their exertions the two officers burst through the open door to the command and control center.. Sheridan sprung into action the second he was in the command center, "Red Alert! I want all squadrons on standby but to take no actions. I don't want to do anything that might be provocative."

Susan rushed to the main control consul, "Scrambling fighters"

The curving shape of the Mimbari cruiser was visible in the distance. The Sharlin was a beautiful angular curving predator of the stars, vaguely resembling a blue angelfish. It's elegance was matched only by its firepower, it would be more than enough to damage or destroy Babylon 5. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that. John walked up to the communications display and activated a wide band transmission, "This is Captian John Sheridan, Earth Alliance Babylon 5 to the Mimbari war cruiser. Power down your weapons this is a diplomatic station."

A haughty looking Mimbari answered his call. She sneered and said, "I am Ay'leet Duran of the Mimbari War Cruiser Trigati. You have illegally arrested and detained the captain of this vessel."

Sheridan squared his shoulders, "Your captain assaulted one of my crew and was caught in an attempted murder."

"None of your people were killed. No Mimbari was killed. You have not been harmed. You will release our captain," Her condescension increased with every syllable. She didn't even need to say the words 'star killer' for him to feel her hatred boring through him.

He stared right on back, "And if we refuse?"

"Captain she's launching fighters," yelled an operations officer. The small inverted dart-like shapes of Nial fighters disgorged from the belly of the great ship and swarmed about the larger craft."

John turned to the monitor, "This is madness. Babylon 5 is a place of peace. There must be for some way to reach a non-violent solution to this. Please just listen for a moment."

"The time for talking is over Human, as is the time for listening. You had the opportunity to talk and listen to the greatest of us and instead you chose to kill him," She shook her head, "All that remains now is honor and… and death" She looked at something in the distance, outside the view of the camera. She yelled something in the Mimbari warrior caste language and deactivated the transmission.

John turned around, "Somebody get me a translation for what she just said. I caught the word impossible and didn't catch the rest."

"Sir," the telemetry operations terminal officer turned around, "I don't think we're going to need a translation for that. There's something extremely odd going on near the hyperspace gate. Something's coming in though the gateway… but whatever it's opening up to most certainly isn't hyperspace."

"What do you mean," Susan approached the consul, eyeing the readouts, "What is it opening up to?"

"I don't know but these readings are off the charts for exotic particles. We're getting alarms for every known type of exotic radiation and a couple of exotic particles I think we've never encountered outside of a particle-collider."

"Sir!" hollered the operations officer, "Something's coming out of it. Something big, something very, very, big."

Sheridan turned to the main view-screen, "Somebody get me the view off the nearest repair-bot in the area."

The screen flickered and a grainy picture of a blue, swirling puncture in space appeared on the screen. It was right behind the rapidly fleeing Trigali billowing an ominous electric blue, nothing like any hyperspace window John had ever seen. A wide gilded prow larger in the shape of a predatory bird was piercing out of the blue. Iridescent green lighting shot out from the blue smoky void and danced across the hull, "What in the hell is that?"

Susan laughed, "That would be the new species the Centauri contacted at the edge of Drazi space yesterday. Ambassador Mollari warned me they might be coming to Babylon 5 but assumed he meant in days or weeks not hours. The Drazi territories are halfway across the galaxy."

"Damn," swore John. The last thing he wanted was for a first contact situation to end with a firefight, "Do we know how to contact them? Warn them that the Trigati isn't ours."

"Apparently they communicate with microwave transmissions for short range communications sir," she sighed, "But I have no way of knowing if they've learned Interlac."

"Do it, send them a transmission to stay out of this. This is our fight not theirs." John looked out at the two massive ships outside Babylon five and the slowly dissipating blue cloud. The bright crimson ship with the golden prow was easily more than half the size of Babylon five, "And tell our fighters not to shoot till someone starts shooting at them.

"We're getting a message from the Trigati sir," the Susan looked at John, "I'll put it on the main screen."

"Do it, and keep transmitting to the other ship that they don't have to help defend the station," John turned to the monitor and looked into the livid face of the Ay'leet Duran, "Mimbari war cruiser Trigali. Do not fire on the incoming ship. I repeat do not fire on the incoming ship. They are a new race. This is a first contact situation. Your problems are with us, not them."

"It is you I want Star Killer, do not worry," Duran smiled cruely, "It is time we finished what we could not at the battle of the line."

"There's no reason for this," Sheridan waved his hands, "The war is over."

"The war is never over Star Killer," she turned her head, "And for some it is just beginning. It seems the choice of keeping the young race out of this battle was taken out of our hands. Defend yourselves!"

"Sir! The new ship has deployed fighters and is engaging the Mimbari warship," Susan looked up, "They sent us a message in reply to our warnings to stay out of the fighting. 'Onward to death, for the homeword, for the Emperor."

"Tell the fighters they are free to engage the Mimbari targets," Sheridan said in a defeated tone, "If they're willing to die to protect the station the least we can do is support them. Activate the station weapons and bulkheads. All hands prepare for impact."

The Sharlin turned to the red ship and fired its man cannon. Brilliant green lances of energy shot out and cut across the port side of the ship. An invisible wall of energy shimmered and spat from the impact.

"Shields," John's eyebrows raised, "They have shields. Are they holding?"

"How should I know?" Susan turned to John, "The Abbai haven't been exactly forthcoming with information about their shield technology." The distant rumbling pulse of the stations pulse cannons and plasma weapons rumbled though its superstructure.

John looked a the tactical readout, "Wait. We can target them?"

Susan raised an eyebrow, "That's odd, do you suppose the other ship is undoing the Jamming technologies?"

"No," he shook his head, "No we've been able to lock onto the ship ever since it came through hyperspace… but that would mean… no… no! They came here to die! They want to be martyrs. Call the other ship! Warn them not to shoot!"

It was too late, the crimson ship's powerful port-side batteries opened fire on the Trigati, crippling it. John activated an open channel to the crimson ship in interlac, "Cease fire! I repeat, cease fire! The Trigati is disabled."

The crimson ship's guns stopped firing, though it's fighters continued to skirmish with Mimbari fighters. John sighed with relief.

"Sir another hyperspace window is forming. It's another Shalin class sir," Susan groaned, "They brought re-enforcements."

"No they didn't commander, I called that one here to help with the Trigati… and for the love of god will someone please get a warning off to the crimson ship that the other Sharlin is a friendly!" He said as the crimson ships fighters moved to engage the incoming Sharlin. He tapped the communicator, "The incoming ship is friendly, I repeat the incoming ship is friendly."

"Sir the Trigati is hailing us," the communications officer blanched, "One word only, 'honor."

Susan yelled, "Radiological alarm, get our fighters out of there." Seconds before a brilliant white plume of energy burst outside the station, rendering the Trigali to debris.

John blinked the stars out of his eyes, "Is everyone ok?"

Susan groaned, "We lost five pilots in the blast sir." Damn, five men dead on his first day. Damn and double damn.

"The other Sharlin is haling us sir."

John winced, "Put it on screen."

A dour and depressed looking mimbari appeared on the viewer, "Perhaps to you this was a tactical problem to be solved, for us this was a great sorrow. The crew of the Trigati were heroes to many of the warrior caste. Their death will be mourned and your name will be remembered, Sheridan Star Killer." The transmission cut to black. The Sharlin turned and sped away into hyperspace even as the crimson ship's fighters sped to intercept it.

Sheridan looked around at the depressing scene outside the station, and to the crimson ship in the distance. He sighed and began to speak into the relative silence of the CnC, "It was an early Earth president, Abraham Lincoln, who best described our situation. 'The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. We cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial though which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.' We shall nobly save or meanly lose our last, best hope of Earth. We can only seek the future while trying to honor the past. Now please try to open up a channel to the other ship."

* * *

Can anyone suggest a good site for finding transcripts of B5 episodes? Transcribing dialogue is a painfully long process.

Cheers, as always reviews are welcome.

EDIT: FFN cocked up my scene breaks.


	8. Chapter 8

A single red giant glowed at the center of the system like a baleful eye in the middle of the cold stone of a dozen dead worlds. They were shadowy seats of powers long dead or so G'kar had believed. A squadron of ships had been lurking in the gravity well of the moon.

The dead did not rest easy it would seem.

At the edge of sensor range ships black as hell were tearing through space, hell bent on his destruction. They'd stumbled into a hornet's nest of black darts and plasma-fire.

The engines of his Frazi class heavy fighter groaned and screeched as he watched the three flickering blips. He licked his lips in frustration and tapped the communicator. "Stay together! Just a little further to the gate."

He flinched as a great purple blob of plasma shot past his window. It collided with one of his escorts. The ship cracked and burst, tossing shrapnel against the hull. It thudded and pinged ominously against the already stressed sides.

G'Nok, leader of his escort, yelled from the fighter behild G'kar, "We're not going to make it."

"Yes we will," G'Kar said, not believing a word of it. These darts were faster than his ship could hope to be. There was no practical way he'd reach the jump-gate in time.

"No," G'Nok said in a tone of stony resolve, "Leave us. Tell the others. Warn them!"

G'Kar winced as the two little green hexagons on his radar turned and charged the ships behind them, firing as fast as they could. The black darts slowed and tried to correct their course to avoid the fighters. He could still hear the warning klaxons of an imminent hull depressurization as G'Nok yelled, "In death we salute you….Honor our names, goodbye."

G'Nok's ship crashed into the dart-ship, exploding with the force of the ship's fission reactors and tossing the other darts off course. G'Kar closed his eyes prayed for their souls. By G'Quan, he would escape to validate their sacrifices, "G'Quan bless your names. You will be remembered with honor."

G'Kar didn't even bother to wait for his sensors to properly calibrate before he started up his computers and activated the command system, "Set Jumpgate sequence, destination Babylon 5."

* * *

"No," Susan repeated for the fifth time over the Interlac translator, "Those are friendlies, I repeat those are friendlies. Do not fire on them. Do not fire on anyone coming through the gate unless they fire first."

She turned to Lt. Corwin and suppressed as screech as she switched off the transmission, "I swear to God, these Imperials had better have something worth all the insanity that we're having to go through for them. They're insufferable."

"I think it's an automated system they've got programmed to ask that question whenever a new ship enters the system. The grammar is always exactly the same for every ship that enters the system."

"I'm just grateful we finally convinced them that they didn't need to have their gun-ports open at all times. ISN is going to have a field day over this thing if something tweaks them off. I'd rather not put those shields of theirs to the test," The Imperials were understandably trigger-happy what had happened on their first day at Babylon 5. It was uncommon to be involved in a firefight at was supposed to be neutral territory even when you understood all the players involved in local politics.

It had been two weeks and they didn't know any more about these Imperials than what the Centauri had shared. The repair bots had got some candid shots of spacesuit-clad bipeds crawling about around on the hull conducting repairs. Small shuttles and Imperial fighters had been flying around the system at odd hours, always filing flight plans with Babylon 5 but never explaining what they were doing or why.

"They sent another request to verify the atmospheric conditions of the station that came in last shift. I did what you asked and just re-sent the same data as last time with an updated scan of the docking bay," he pulled out a data crystal, "We actually had one of the techs set up a macro for it in the future."

"Oh, I could hug you Lieutenant. Typing that command in five times a day was enough once in a lifetime, every day for two weeks….it's just too much." Additional quarantine procedures that were demanded of any species coming to Babylon 5 for the first time but the steps the Imperials were demanding was wholesale paranoia.

It had been two weeks since the crimson and gold ship had arrived and Susan was still confirming a re-confirming the most basic of atmospheric data and bacteria warnings, even after they'd informed her that they had no intention of entering the station without encounter suits. It was like dealing with some hypochondriac version of the Vorlon Empire. At least the Vorlons had the common sense to simply sit in the distance and look cryptic, the chatter between the station and the Imperial ship had been incessant.

The Imperial ship had sent not one but five alphabets and distinct languages. When Susan had asked if they could specify which languages were used by the Imperial government in official documents the Imperials had responded that they already _had_ done so then sent an additional six hundred languages that were apparently colloquial languages of the Empire. She rather pitied the linguistics department at Earthdome who got to sift through that data.

And the prayers! Every three hours without fail the ship would broadcast a signal to the various ships in system. When Babylon 5 had sent a request for a translation of the signal they'd gotten more than they bargained for. Most of the finer points of the prayers were lost in translation to and from interlac but there were some uncomfortable lines about "burning the unclean" and "cleansing the unworthy" that reminded her too much of Dilgar battle rhetoric.

"On the bright side Mam' they seem to have very advanced technologies," the lieutenant smiled, "I wouldn't mind getting a look at the cockpit of one of those Imperial fighters. They may maneuver like a tank but they're fast as all get out."

"You might get your chance Lieutenant," Susan looked down at the chiming interlac translator, "They're requesting permission to dock with the station in docking bay 19 at 13:00 hours."

"That's great Commander," Corwin smiled, "I'll inform the Captain and the Ambassadors."

"I don't know Lieutenant," Susan stared at the ship, "Something about that ship just feels… wrong to me. It's the start of something new but I can't help but shake the feeling that we might be about to find out how Jankowski felt in his later years."

* * *

The isolation ward behind the thick glass of the environmentally sealed healing chamber looked as sterile and uncomfortable as Sheridan remembered those on the Agamemnon being. He looked in at the Starfury pilots who managed to get away from the blast and couldn't help but think of those who hadn't.

Treatment for radiation burns was a small price to pay by comparison.

He turned as he heard footsteps behind him, "Doctor, how's it going? I thought you'd be off duty by now."

"I'm running a little late," Dr. Franklin squinted and rubbed as his eyes, staring blearily at his patients, "Can I talk to you for a moment?"

"Yeah," Sheridan looked down at his watch, "I can afford a minute. My sister's coming for a visit. I have time before she arrives. How is mister Garibaldi?"

"Frankly not great," the doctor pulled a series of radion treatment vials and passed them to a nurse. The nurse walked away and entered the isolation ward, "That's what I want to talk to you about. I've pulled out every trick I know and nothing seems to work. He's not coming out of that coma."

Sheridan grunted noncommittally. Security Chief Michael Garibaldi had been shot in the back under mysterious circumstances several weeks ago by a person or persons unknown. Garibaldi's record was colorful but the near universal respect and understanding the crew seemed to have for the man overshadowed his past. It would be a tragedy if they lost someone so clearly important to the cohesion of Babylon 5. Even the Centauri Ambassador seemed to be genuinely worried about Mr. Garibaldi's recovery.

The doctor eyed Sheridan's pensive look and continued, "Now there is one other option but it means performing an unauthorized procedure."

"I see," authorizing any more esoteric medical procedures was uncommon but within his rights as military governor of the station, "Have you tried contacting his next of kin?"

"I tried and failed," the doctor's voice took on some genuine fear, "And I'm afraid if we wait any longer it wont do any good." It was unlikely that he would ever find any of Garibaldi's relatives. Michel was tight lipped about the specifics of his home life growing up but Stephen had always gotten the impression that Garibaldi's family was long dead.

Sheridan tilted his head, "What's the procedure?"

"Last year I came into possession of an alien device capable of draining the life energy from a person and giving it to somebody else," Sheridan's eyebrow quirked upwards, the use of alien medical technology was permitted on earth force stations but rarely without decades of testing to make sure it didn't have any side effects, "It was used as a kind of death penalty."

Death was definitely a side effect, "Sounds nasty,"

"But it can be used safely at lower settings," Dr. Franklin's hesitated, "to heal people."

"Are you speaking from personal experience?" Dr. Franklin did not seem like the type to suggest this sort of thing without evidence, and if he was conducting medical research on station without informing Sheridan this conversation could prove to be problematic.

"Oh no, no, no, no I haven't done it myself but I have seen it used that way," the doctor shook his head wildly, "Still there is a risk and I wanted your permission before I tried it."

"And there's no other way?"

Dr. Franklin shook his head, "It's his only hope."

Sheridan smiled sadly, "We don't have much choice do we?" The doctor's face broke into an expression of great relief as Sheridan continued, "Who are you going to hook up to the machine."

"Well I can't ask somebody else to hook up to the machine if something goes wrong," Dr. Franklin looked into the long term ward pensively, "I'll do it"

* * *

Abbas felt hopelessly small as the held the ornamental tool chest and carried it over with Dax, another of Kerrigan's apprentices. It was a large framed steel box emblazoned with the cog of the Adeptus Mechanicus and filled to the brim with large tools intended to be held by agumentically enhanced arms, altogether too heavy for a single boy of Abbas' size to carry on his own.

He felt his knees shake slightly as Dax tilted the box upwards and set his side on the workbench of Kerrigan's workbench. Abbas pushed hard and shoved the box onto the table. His eyes widened as he realized he'd misjudged his own strength and the reached to stop the tool-case from tipping off the other side of the workbench.

A long mechandrite shot out from seemingly nowhere and a harsh metallic voice rang out, "I believe it was the table I wanted those on young master Abbas. Not the floor. Let's avoid blasphemy in your first week."

Blasphemy, it was so odd to be worshiping the Machine aspect of the Emperor rather than the usual cult of the Emperor. Tools were icons of worship much as the golden aquilla under the robes of any common man of the Empire would be.

He looked up at the inscrutable and scarred face of Enginseer Iino. Iino was not a bad teacher by any measure but Abbas preferred the carefree joy Kerrigan showed in her worship of the machine rather than the dirge like meticulousness of Enginseer Iino's idea of worship, "Of course machine-brother Iino. I understand," he caught Iino's stern look, "No Enginseer… I really don't. I'm sorry."

"No child," he chuckled, "You do not. But someday you will," he said in a surprisingly kind tone before turning to the other apprentice, "Dax I believe? Yes, you are. Report to the fight deck, you'll be with Engineer Xon learning about the proper invocations of preparation."

He snorted at the slightly startled expression on Dax's face at Iino remembering his name, "Memory Engrams boy. I'm not about to forget a name or a face this century. Now go! And I expect you to grab the incense for the ritual before you get there."

Dax hopped to attention and shuffled out of the room, making a rough facsimile of the hunched position of prayer he'd seen done by the elder devotees of the machine god. Iino rolled his remaining eye and turned to Abbas, "You, on the other hand will be helping me with something else."

"What machine-brother?" For all Iino's severe traditionalism and businesslike manner his works were always fascinating. Abbas understood little of what he saw and littler of what it did but he would. He would be allowed to know things about the bounty that even his father would never know, a thought that appealed to him greatly.

"A thirst for knowledge is a good thing child," Iino said in a tone of mild disapproval, "But don't let it override your common sense. You may be apprenticed to the Magos but certain aspects of her ideology are wisest if not fully explored."

Iino had been hinting at some 'issue' of 'ideology' shown by Kerrigan for some time though Abbas had no idea what he was speaking of. He suspected it was some sort of test of loyalty or something, testing him to see if he would crack under pressure and start revealing things about the magos. He simply nodded politely and said, "I suspect I'm too early into my apprenticeship to understand what it means to be a Tech-priest."

"Truer words were never spoken boy," Iino started to pull bizarre instruments out of the toolbox and prod them at a skull-faced helmet on the table, "Now tell me, what is it that I'm working on right now."

Abbas smiled, he might actually know this one, "The Inquisitor's pressure suit I believe… flak armor layered over a bodysuit." It was as ornate and ostentatious a suit of body-armor as even his father could have hoped for. Every inch of flak armor was covered with a thin layer of some obsidian colored ceramic covered in small golden hexegrammic wards and prayers written in blocky high-gothic. The skull-faced golden death mask in Iino's hands was covered in cables leading to a complicated machine seated at the base of the neck and leading down the spine.

Iino tapped at the helmet with the tool, "Child you might has well tell me I was working on 'something' for the Inquisitor. Specifically what am I working on?"

Abbas approached and eyed the fine and tubes Iino was running through his fingers, "That's the filtration system right? To separate out any harmful elements out of the air, bacterial and the like."

"Good," Iino nodded curtly, "And why are we rubbing the oils into the machine's workings?"

"To cleanse and appease the machine's will?" He said tentatively. There were so many conflicting rites and rituals it was hard to keep them straight in his mind.

"All rituals we do are to that end child. Let's try something different," he pointed to the find bundled cables streaming from the back of the helmet, "What function do these serve in the filtration system."

"Uh, none I can think of machine brother," he looked closer and pointed at a machine thin machine on the left side of the belt of the inquisitor's suit, "That's the filtration unit so unless it's a redundant system I can't think of any way it could be part of it."

"Good," Iino nodded, "It is not. This is part of the Inquistor's psychic hood. This symbol here," he pointed to a symbol of a yawning skull burning overlaid on the Inquisitorial sigil, "This warns of psychically reactive materials within the machine. Never attempt to repair a machine with this symbol on it."

"With what symbol on it?" rang out a voice from behind them. Abbas turned and found himself face to face with Inquisitor Hilder himself. He hadn't even heard the man approach at all. The Inquisitor's sandy hair and hawk like features seemed even more stony and intimidating than the rumors made them out to be.

He tried to clear his mind of all impure thoughts, Inquisitors could supposedly sniff out heresies no matter now remote. As he tried not to think of how many times he'd taken the Emperor's name in vain when he'd stubbed his toe in the dark this morning Iino started conversing with the Inquisitor after greeting the Inquisitor's Skitarii bodyguard in binary.

"Your suit is just about ready Inquisitor. I'm just making some final adjustments to the hood's calibrations. Are you quite sure you want it to be activated when you arrive?"

"Better safe than sorry, they've already shown what the value of 'neutral' ground means in this sector of space. That ship may well have been a renegade but I'm not taking any chances. I know for a fact that several psychics have tried and failed to probe past the ship's wards. We need all the defenses we can have." He looked around the room,

"Where's Magos Frist?"

"Retrieving the Archo-flagellant," Iino said impassively, "And getting your Ogryn to wear a pressure suit I suspect."

"Rather mundane work for a Magos," The Inquisitor blinked in surprise, "I wasn't surprised she agreed to my plan but I didn't expect her to become this personally involved," he chuckled.

"The Magos has become security conscious as of late," Iino said, looking deliberately at the helmet on the table and away from the Inquisitor, "She preferred to limit the range of communications with the staff."

"Not the damned Amon Sui again? Who did they get this time? How can I help?" The inquisitor rested his hand on the hilt of a well-worn power sword. Abbas stiffened slightly as he watched the Inquisitor's fingers caress the ruby pommel of the sword and briefly imagined wearing the full battle harness of a Magos and fighting at the Inquisitor's side.

"You need not trouble yourself inquisitor," Iino lifted the helmet, "Lets get you suited up!"

"I really must insist," the Inquisitor said in a voice of dangerous calm.

"This is an internal affair of the Adeptus Mechanicus, I am neither required nor welling to reveal more to you than I have. Now strip and put on this suit or I shall weld it to you," the Inquisitor flinched as though he were about to say something, but thought better of it, nodded and acquiesced.

"Very well then Enginseer," The Inquisitor started stripping down to a skin tight sythaskin body-glove, "If I'm to be suited up, suit me up," he raised a finger, "but I demand the opportunity to question any Amon Sui prisoners you take."

The enginseer lifted the helmet Daul's pressure suit and shoved it into the Inquisitor's hands, "You may demand all you like Inquisitor, I'm sure the Magos will consider it."

Abbas suddently wondered if it was wise to stand between the two men.

* * *

John smiled as he spotted a hand waving over the crowd and heard a familiar voice yell, "Johnny!" A blonde head popped into and out of view as it jumped up and down like an excited spaniel. The crowd shifted and a short, friendly-looking woman in a fashionable suit forced her way through the crowd and made her way over to John.

She had always been a bit pushy. John suspected it was to compensate for never growing as tall as her big brother.

"Lizzy!" He hugged her and twirled her in the air "Lizzy, Lizzy!"

"Hi big brother," Liz giggled as John set her on the ground.

"Oh it's good to see you. How was your flight? I hope the extra security for our new arrivals didn't slow you down much." It had only been a matter of hours since the Imperials had declared they were _finally_ sending over an envoy and Babylon security had been put on high alert.

"Fine, a little bumpy coming out of hyperspace and your security guards seemed especially on edge but otherwise no complaints."

"Good."

"You look like you've gained weight."

"Ah well," Liz always had a habit of mothering him, "What can I say. After three years in deep patrol eating synthetics I took one look at the garden here and completely lost control."

"Sounds great. I'm starved" Liz rubbed the sides of her stomach.

"Good, let's get you something to eat! I'll have your bags sent to your quarters," he smiled bashfully, "Liz I'm sorry but before we eat I've got to help with the meet and greet. It's a first contact situation and they can't risk snubbing the guy in charge by having him meet with the second in command and not the first."

"Oh," Liz smiled, "Any juicy stories?"

John chuckled and grinned, "You have no idea. Still it hopefully won't keep me too long. It's just a basic meet, greet, and show them to their temporary quarters."

"Quarters eh? Which sector?"

"Green actually," John smiled, "There's a special section of green sector made for this exact purpose, though it hasn't gotten much use. The Senate was actually debating repurposing them as paid living spaces because they were used so little."

"I'd say that argument got shot down," Liz laughed, "Don't worry about me. You go meet whoever it is you need to, I could use a nap after that trip anyway."

"Great, let's show you to your quarters."

* * *

Londo sat in the garden staring at a bush and wondering why the Earther's seemed to be so determined to plant orange flowers all over the place. They were truly garish looking buds, vaguely resembling Narn skin tones. Vir Cotto, his attendant, assured him they had always been planted there but he didn't believe that for a moment. It was some subtle insult from someone. It had to be.

It was probably the doing of a Narn.

Mollari had Narns on the brain as of late. Mollari had always hated the Narn but hadn't ever feared them, not more than any other Centauri did.

Now, with what he had done… no not what he had done, what he had _allowed_ to happen Mollari feared every single Narn he saw on the station. Which of them held a dagger with his name on it thirsting for his blood? There was not a Narn alive who would not declare a blood oath against him if they knew his crimes against them.

They might be coming for him already.

Lost in these dark thoughts he flinched as he heard a familiar voice from behind him, "I understand you were looking for me Ambassador."

Londo turned and saw a stone faced Earther in a tidy suit, one Mr. Morden. He did not know Mr. Morden's first name or his history, nor did he wish to. Mr. Morden had come into Mollari's life with the past month seemingly out of nowhere offering the impossible, and delivering it. Mr. Morden represented someone very powerful in the universe. They were the sorts of people willing to destroy a Narn outpost as a demonstration.

The ever smiling Morden strode forward at a confident pace, "How can I be of service?"

"The destruction of the Narn base in quadrant 37 is drawing quite a lot of attention," Mollari stared Mr. Morden straight in the eye. Showing fear or mistrust would be unwise in these sort of secret dealings.

Mordren smiled and started to walk along the path past Mollari, "Yes, that was the intent."

Mollari reached out and hesitantly grabbed Mr. Morden by the sleeve, " And you are absolutely certain this cannot be traced back me?"

"Oh, without a shadow of a doubt," Mr. Morden's confident assurances somehow made Mollari less comfortable rather than moreso, "The Narn's will never be able to prove that it was done at your instigation." Mordren smiles, "And based upon your promise to take care of it your government accepts your responsibility without question or hesitation."

"Perfect symmetry and balance." Mr. Morden laughed as though he'd just made a great joke, "I believe that this little demonstration will bring you some very interesting propositions."

"Yes," Londo twisted his face halfway between a scowl and a smile, "but what happens if I'm asked for another of these little demonstrations?"

"Then we'll provide it. Simply choose your target, a colony, an outpost."

Londo snorted, "Why don't you eliminate the entire Narn home world while you're at it?"

"One step at a time Ambassador, one step at a time," Mr. Morden's voice had a dangerous edge to it.

Londo blanched and stared.

Mordren starts to walk away and stops, "Oh, one last thing, a small favor in return for our good efforts on your behalf. A person in an important position like yours hears many things. And if you should hear about anything strange happening out on the rim I'd appreciate being informed. Even if it seems unimportant."

Londo snorted, "Other than these Imperials you mean."

"That is a start," the human had an unnatural tendency not to blink, "I would appreciate you being so kind as to keep my appraised of any major events that might come to pass with these," he paused as though considering the name, "Imperials."

"These associates of yours," Londo chuckled, "Not a big fan of outside influences causing conflict in their plans are they? Keeping an eye on things I see?"

"Nothing so blunt ambassador," Morden smiled wider and shook his head laughing at some private joke, "Call it a… professional rivalry. My associates are especially interested in fostering a welcoming environment for these Imperials if possible. Perhaps even coming to a similar friendship as ours."

"What am I supposed to do then?"

"Nothing that you wouldn't be trying to do already. Open trade with them, have cultural exchanges," Mr. Morden rubbed his hands together, "We would appreciate it if you saw to it that the Imperials were properly introduced to the community as smoothly as is possible."

"I see," Londo felt a powerful need for Brivari.

"I doubt that," Morden looked down at his watch, "I apologize for my abruptness but I have business elsewhere. Good day ambassador."

The Earther bowed his head and exited the gardens. Londo sat down on the cold stone of the bench and once again wondered just who it was he was in business with. He would sit there for another hour just thinking till his communicator chimed warning him of the incoming Imperial ambassador. He stood and wandered off to the docking bays.

* * *

Lennier scratched at the spot on his arm where he'd been inoculated with the cocktails of anti-bacterial and anit-viral preventatives. It was necessary for first contact situations but it made his arm twinge painfully. He tried to distract himself by looking around the room.

It was an inauspicious space for the first contact with such a clearly advanced race. The Earther's had done their best to decorate the area to make it properly fitting of such an event but they were only human. No Minbari would even begin to consider using a space without proper incense or candlelight but the Earthers were odd that way.

Delenn had always assured Lennier that the human preference for subdued minimalism was to their credit but he could not help but feel the flags and fanfare of the Earthforce honor guard would be outshined by an elegant and contemplative religious caste embassy. However needs were musts and Babylon 5 was an Earther station and beholden to Earther traditions, unsophisticated though they were.

He did deeply wish that it were Delenn who was responsible for the first contact with the Imperials rather than he. The Grey Council had authorized him to be at the first contact, it would not do for the younger races to be present but not the Minbari. He was not to negotiate anything, mind you, but to be the first representative of Minbar to meet them. It was a great honor, if an admittedly intimidating one.

There were a good two-dozen odd Ambassadors packed into the small space of the docking bay along with an honor guard of Babylon 5 security officers in full black armor. There was a powerful atmosphere of excitement as the Starkiller… no not the Starkiller, Captian Sheridan. The man's name was John Sheridan. He had to keep reminding himself of that, if he continued to think of the Captain in terms of his war record it could make thinks awkward later. Captain Sheridan walked into the docking bay with his second in command Lieutenant Commander Ivanova.

"Strange scamperings at the twilight hour," Lennier nearly jumped out of his skin at the voice. How could something that big be that quiet?

Lennier turned and faced the enigmatic creature behind him. Ambassador Kosh was a Vorlon, the Ambassador to the Vorlon Empire, and as unfathomable as any of his species. The Vorlons were creatures of myths and legend. Even the Minbari, favored among the Vorlon's allies, were left in shadow to all things Vorlon.

Rumor had it that members of the Grey Council were permitted to see a Vorlon without the massive encounter suit favored by the Vorlons but that was only one of a thousand rumors about the Vorlons, each less credible than the last.

"It is good to see you Ambassador Kosh," Lennier said, trying to look Ambassador Kosh in the helmet without flinching at the single red optic in the middle of it, "What brings you to this gathering?"

For anyone else it would have been an odd question. First contact situations with new species were massive political affairs. However the Vorlons rarely concerned themselves with the doings of other, lesser, races. Kosh was not even particularly wont to attending meetings of the Council, in spite of his species having one of the five major votes.

Kosh sighed deeply, "The unusual. "

"What is unusual?" Vorlons had an infuriating habit of speaking in riddles. There were septs of the Minbari priest class who did nothing but listen for the meaning and wisdom in Vorlon speech.

"The unexpected… the unknown," The Vorlon's eye focused into the distance and grew sad, "The predictable and the predetermined."

Lennier looked in the direction the Vorlon was staring. The Centauri had been the ones to first contact the Imperials so it was fitting that they took the lead in greeting them. It was an honor that rankled other members of the Council and the League.

The Drazi and Brakiri ambassadors seemed to be vying over which of them could give the most derisive looks to the Centauri ambassador. Well at least vying for second to the Narn delegate. Na'Toth stood in the second row of the greeting committee with the non-aligned worlds ambassadors for the Drazi and Brakiri home worlds. She stared at Londo with a smoldering hatred Lennier hoped he would never understand.

"They do seem determined to keep their hatreds alive for eternity," Lennier sighed and looked back at Ambassador Kosh.

Kosh was no longer paying attention to the Minbari. The single red optic was focused on a nondescript bit of wall and he was muttering something about a widening circle.

The Vorlons could be fickle like that. Lennier resisted the urge to bob on his heels in anticipation as a human voice crackled over the speakers, "Incoming Imperial shuttle one. Prepare for disembarkation."

Lenneir head a low whistle of amazement from Captain Sheridan as the airlock doors opened and large transport slowly lowered to the floor of the docking bay. He noticed the great gilded paintings of lions on the bottoms of the wings and rose his brow rose in mild surprise. It was uncommon for species to decorate their shuttles, the micro debris and radiation of space often made such ornamentation prohibitively expensive and impractical to maintain.

The floor beneath the ship glowed blue, as it's antigravity repulsions flared against the deck. Three stocky legs extended from the ship and the hum of engine and repulsion fields cut. As the rear door hissed and groaned from opening into a variable pressure environment, a slight mist forming in the air where ice crystals cracked off the door that had formed in the vacuum. Lennier couldn't help but notice what looked distinctly like weapon mounts on the nose and wings of the shuttle.

"Curious," The Vorlon quirked his head at the sound of feet hitting deck echoing from inside the ship. Over a dozen wildly different looking sentient creatures ambled down the walkway. They were nearly as varied and odd a collection of creatures as the League itself.

The first to exit were a quartet of broad shouldered bipeds wearing bright crimson and gold pressure suits under broad silk cloaks and pants. They edged warily down the ramp with the air of professional soldiers and twitched their arms as though they would much prefer to be holding pulse-rifles rather than unarmed. They were closely flanked by a giant figure in a massive black pressure suit, a warped mechanical creature with numerous mechanical tentacles that waved about as though sniffing the air, and an avian creature wearing a cotton jerkin and holding the leash to two lean reptilian mastiffs.

The security officers around the room rubbed their pulse rifles confidently, eying the newcomers and daring them to start trouble. The man at the front of them eventually relaxed slightly and yelled, "Is est tutus. Vos können Ausfahrt traba Inchizitor."

Out from the dark interior of the ship strode a small cluster of other figures easily as eclectic as the first. This newfound Empire had to consist of dozens of member species to contain such vast variation in its members. It would be exciting to share their respective cultures. He was however somewhat apprehensive to discover exactly what purpose the naked humanoid creature with the thick beard and the whips grafted onto his fingers served.

The Captain and the rest of the honor guard approached the newcomers. Sheridan's tone was infectiously happy as he said in broken interlac, "On behalf on the Earth alliance it is my pleasure to welcome you to Babylon 5," and held out his hand.

The skull-masked man in the center of the group eyed Sheridan's hand as though looking for the trap, nodded and shook the proffered appendage before turning to the slightly twitching man to his left and speaking in the gruff tones of one of the Imperial languages.

The twitching man nodded began to speak, "On behalf of the Empire we greet you, may his grace shine upon this meeting. I am Jak, I am a speaker of fact," Lennier winced linguistic nuance was often lost in interlac, "and I will make the voice of honorable Daul Hilder heard."

"And who is Daul Hilder, if I might ask? Is he the captain of your ship?" Mollari rubbed his hands together eagerly.

Jack turned to Hilder and spoke in the rough Imperial language. The Imperials burst into a gibbering mess of hooting and hollering with laughter. Mollari had apparently made a joke, though if it was simply an issue of idiomatic translation or cultural misunderstanding was unclear.

Mollari deflated a bit at the apparent cultural misstep. His crest of hair seemed to droop as he smiled right on back. It was the same smile he wore when speaking to the Narn Ambassador, forced and painful.

After a few moments Jack turned back to the Earthforce honor guard and began speaking in Interlac, "The Captain of the _Endless Bounty_ is indisposed at the moment but we have brought the proper technology to communicate with him directly at the later meeting. Daul Hilder's position within the hierarchy is more… this language lacks the proper words… he is a seeker of hidden truth and a finder of lies. I will endeavor to make these linguistic complexities clearer. "

Sheridan smiled, "We expect our computers to have a translator up an running by the time we have an actual meeting so as to expedite the process," he nodded, "provided of course it's ok for us to do so."

Jack translated again. The three-eyed man wearing the transparent glass helmet blinked his bottom two eyes in surprise and spoke in condescending tones for a few seconds. He was cut off by an abrupt screeching metallic warble from the mechanical man.

The skull helmeted man raised his hands to the two of them and spoke in clipped orders before turning back to Jak and speaking in measured tones.

"You would not require us to receive implants for that would you?"

Sheridan smiled patiently, "That will not be necessary, we simply would need you to carry a translation device with you. For the moment we'll need to use one of the bulkier more complex devices."

Jak nodded slowly, "These devices would be acceptable. For the meetings only, we will not allow listening devices with us outside of the meetings."

"Great," Sheridan waved his arm. "If you will follow me I would be glad to direct you to your apartments. We've scheduled a number of meetings and cultural exchanges between our worlds so that you might better…" Sheridan trailed off as the skull helmeted man raised a gloved hand to his forehead, "Are you quite alright?"

The man responded in scornful Imperial dialect. As the large mechanical man rushed to his side small plumes of blue static bloomed from the skull-faced man's neck and helmet, glowing eerily. The "truth seeker" growled gutturally and howled something furiously. Plumes of static discharge spat from his body.

Jak's voice became even more clipped and businesslike, "Lord Hilder will not tolerate psychic probes into his mind or into the minds of his retinue. We were very clear that there should be no psychics here to greet us. He graciously allows you forgiveness for this one offense but will shred the mind of the next man to try it."

Sheridan glared daggers at the others in the room and nodded, "Of course. I understand," he switched back into English as the honor guard started leading the Imperials into green sector, "And I shouldn't have to remind you what a stupid idea it is to conduct an illegal and unregistered mind probe on a species we've never met before on an Earthforce military outpost. I will, of course, be launching an investigation into this."

Lennier turned to ask Kosh if he had any idea what device the Imperial diplomat had stopped the would-be probe with but the Vorlon had already vanished. How someone so large could be so stealthy made no sense at all.

It was a shame Delenn hadn't been here to greet them.

* * *

Dauls head throbbed badly as he berated himself for revealing that he had a defense against psychic intrusions into his mind. The xenos mind-probing had been delicate, nothing more than a mild surface scan to make him aware that there was a powerful psychic mind in the room. It was common for psychic species to do so as a polite way of allowing other species to be aware of them.

He'd intended to simply ignore the probe or bat it away with his own mind but the familiar warm probing sensation caused something in him to snap. Beyond all reason he wanted to keep that probe away from his mind at all costs. He'd put so much force into tossing away a minor probe that he doubted he'd be able to do it a second time.

Hopefully whatever had tried it wouldn't do so a second time.

Cairn was torn between his urge to mother Daul and his urge to intimidate the station security officers. Cairn settled for giving mildly worried looks in Daul's direction and staying close enough to the security officers to unnerve them with his waving mechandrites.

The broad jawed humanoid in charge of the station "_Sha-in-clair_" was at least esthetically of Terran stock. The Captain's accent and mannerisms resembled those of the Merican guardsmen who'd served in his retinue at the Ve'x'xiz offensive but numerous species resembled humans esthetically if not biologically. He would not be lulled by a friendly face.

The Lionhearts walked proudly but a bit nakedly without the ornate weapons they usually carried with them at all times. Daul doubted they'd obeyed his order not to bring any weapons with them. He'd certainly dropped enough hints that they were to carry secret weapons that it would have taken someone simpler than a grox to have missed his actual intent in warning them not to carry weapons with them, namely not getting caught.

Babylon Five was an odd place to be sure. The décor was an odd mix of Spartan practicality and gaudy showiness. Everything about the station indicated a new race that had just started to spread out to the stars.

Danzig smiled and chuckled and shook his head. The long hose from his air-scrubber shook and clicked against the flak armor under his silken shirts and leather jerkin, "I don't like this sir, there are too many bulkheads between us and our ship."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it Colonel," Daul felt the pain abating in his temples, "For now keep talk like that to a minimum. Assume the walls have ears."

The oily voice of Navigator Calven was somewhat muffled by the vox unit on his helmet as he said, "They said they're working on a translator but I'd wager good money that it's already being used to listen in on us. I would pick my words with care honored Inquisitor… then again I suspect you already have more than enough practice at saying less than you mean and meaning less than you say."

Daul wondered how badly it would damage negotiations were he to punch the navigators face. It was probably not worth the brief satisfaction it would give, but only just so. Daul felt something bump into his side and looked down to see the normally unnaturally chipper face of Dorn twisted into a scowl of dislike for the Navigator.

He blinked and looked back down at the servitor in confusion. Dorn was smiling and drooling the same as he always did. "Fantastic," groaned Daul, "Now I'm imagining things. I need a good stiff drink."

"A foolish man sees that he sees and knows what he knows. A clever man trys to undersand," whistled Vira'Capac from behind Daul. His two mastiffs growled and clicked their beaks eagerly.

"I did not ask for your advice," Daul said in a tone that invited no argument.

"You did not need to," tittered Vira'Capac, "Wisdom is tempered by criticism."

"Are you _sure_ I can't shoot it?" Hamman said in a tone of strained patience.

"Not yet," Daul muttered as the Babylon Captian led them deeper into the bowels of the ship, "Not yet."

As they walked to the Imperial ambassador's suite Jack translated the various rules and regulations of the station being explained by the Captain. The protocols expected of the Imperials was strict, but not prohibitively or unacceptably so. Anyone from Daul's entourage was welcome to tour the ship and make use of its facilities, provided they continued to wear their encounter suits till their doctors ensured they were carrying no harmful bacteria, but never without an escort.

It was all very reasonable to Daul, however there was a particular point to the station's rules that incensed Vira'Capac. He would not be allowed to take his mastiffs out of the diplomatic quarters. The tall Kroot actually grabbed the Captain by his shirt with his taloned hands and screeched furiously in the Kroot language at the idea of being separated from what remained of his brood. The two mastiffs, still muzzled and on their leads growled ominously.

Daul eyed the now primed and aimed weapons of their security escort wondering if he would be able to grab the Kroot in time to stop him from ripping the Captain's throat out. Fortunately Gault, in a brief moment of agility, swatted Vira'Capac across the beak with the backside of his trash-bin lid sized hand, knocking the Kroot senseless senseless. He draped the dazed Kroot over his shoulder and grabbed the two stunned looking mastiffs by the leathery scruff of their necks, tucking them under each arm.

Daul bit his lip to stop from laughing as brutish ogryn actually started humming to the wildly kicking mastiffs to soothe them. Cairn's shoulder's were shaking fit to burst and there was an infuriating smugness to him as Daul whispered, "I get it you mechanical maniac. You were right, I was wrong. The oaf is useful and we can keep him. Now do you want to explain to the men aiming guns at us why shooting at us would be a bad thing or shall I?"

The black suited security officers were pointing bulky rifles at the Imperials aiming at the stony faced Lionhearts who in turn had shifted and were preparing themselves to strike at a moments notice. The primed weapons were giving off a high pitched whistling noise that sounded all too much like the priming of plasma weaponry for comfort.

The only ones who didn't seem to be on edge about the situation were Galut, who by all accounts considered his part in the confrontation to be over, Calven, who was making every effort to seem bored with the situation, and Dorn, who never had a clue where he was under the best of circumstances.

The Captain of the Babylon station ran his fingers along where Vira'Capac's talons had ripped his uniform and said something in a language Daul did not understand. Language was, however, only supplementary to the conversation at this point. The man's expression of barely controlled anger needed no words.

Jak opened his mouth to translate but was interrupted by Daul, "I know what he said. Tell him this, word for word as close as you can manage it. I apologize for the confusion. We seem to have had a cultural misunderstanding. I expect there will be many of them in the days to come. The Kroot hounds are actually infant forms of the larger Kroot creature. Vira'Capac believed you wanted to take away his children."

"Those hounds will no more develop into hunters in their lifetimes than an ape would develop into you or I," Jak twitched.

"Jak, just lie. It may very well bite us later in negotiations but hopefully not as bad as being shot now would now would hurt us all," Daul said in a voice of measured calm, "Now translate what I said."

Jak translated. The Captains face went from angry, to shocked, to embarrassed, and then back to friendly. He said something to the back-suited security forces and they relaxed somewhat, their weapons no longer whining with primed energy. The Captain flashed a dazzling smile and spoke to Jack.

"The Kroot will be permitted to travel with his… children," Jak's lip quirked, "But he must insist that if they misbehave they be confined to quarters else both they and their parent return to your base ship."

Daul nodded curtly, "Tell him that will be acceptable, now it would be best if we went to our quarters I think. I've had more than enough excitement for the moment."

* * *

To be reduced to asking her for help was insufferable. Sørian would gladly have turned to anyone else, literally _anyone_, before turning to her but he could think of no alternative to it. Contacting other members of the Amon Sui networks was an unstated unwritten taboo yet he needed to know if other practitioners were experiencing difficulty. His value to Phoneutria was almost wholly dependant upon his ability to collect information, were that avenue closed to him it would possibly spell his doom.

The bar he'd chosen was one of the private clubs favored by the officers with unique appetites. It catered to the unique needs of the Bounty's profitable and well to do in the privacy of soundproof cells. Sørian commonly used it as a recruiting ground for lesser operatives and minor cult practitioners, it was prime real-estate for those pledged to excess.

It also had the benefit of weapons scanners sophisticated enough to find most weapons and poisons. Sørian would of course be allowed to carry his weapons through, he owned part of the club after all, but that insufferable women would have to be on the defensive. He snorted the white powder off the table and felt his senses heighten and his fingers twinge. Slaught was a narcotic powerful enough that it ought to boost his reaction times to being roughly equal those of the cultist, or so he hoped.

The door cracked and through it stepped the familiar porcelain masked figure. Tall, lithe, and swaying, Hexathelidae had arrived. She glided over to one of the cushioned sofas and stretched on it luxuriously. Sørian ignored the way that the silks stretched deliciously over her every curve.

"You've noticed then I take it?"

She laughed cruelly, "Noticed what little boy. Why did you bring me here? To talk about the work of the Prince or was it to show me your gun," she puckered her lips and eyed his pistol exaggeratedly, doing something with her index finger that made him swallow uncomfortably.

"Games later Hexathelidae," he smiled, "You wouldn't deign to come when I called unless you had dire need or you were sure it would be to put a knife in my throat."

"We all have hobbies," she said with deliberate disinterest as she ran her fingernails over the plush material of the couch, "And I have no need of you."

"Don't you?" Sørian smiled, "And if I were to tell you I had a way to get back in contact with our patron so that he will respond to our sacrifices."

Hexathelidae flinched visibly and the pretenses of civility left her voice, "You did this to me didn't you," she eyed his pistol seemingly considering jumping the table and throttling him, "you robbed me of my boon and my savior!"

"Nothing so fortunate I'm afraid," said in a calming tone. He was sure he would win a fight but he had no doubt Hexathelidae would gouge his eyes out first, "I am similarly indisposed. There is something off about this region of space, the patron seems not to have reached here yet."

"My summons have gone," she licked her lips, "Awry."

"The wrong daemon came when you summoned and demanded answers?" Sørian shook his head, "Damned addlebrained creatures of Tzeench rambling about what lies beyond the well?"

"Khorne actually," Hexathelidae said the word Khorne with the tone of one discussing a particularly nasty but of filth, "Scornful and frothing as ever."

"There is something very wrong with this sector of space. The virgin warp-flows where we are seem to be almost even beyond all but the strongest of the servants of the true gods," Sørian eyed Hexathelidae and considered whether to continue, "There is… opportunity in that."

"How so?" Hexathelidae's eyes lit up.

"This part of space is only beyond the reach of our patron _so far_. There is no reason to assume that we could not expand his domain to include this realm." Sørian's eyes lit up, "Imagine it! Imagine how he would favor us for our deeds. A new galaxy ripe for the taking and full of creatures to corrupt outside the reach of the realms of his fellow gods."

Hexathelidae smiled widely and started to run her hands over her sides, hugging her hips and cupping her generous bosoms, "A sacrifice worthy my ascension."

"Our ascension," he winked, "I suspect the prince will grant all those who aid in brining him over to this realm the gift of immortality."

"And why would you get it," Hexathelidae said huskily, "What need do I have of you?"

"Why Hexathelidae," Sørian smiled, "It isn't I who needs to prove my value in this relationship. What need do I have of you? I am the sorcerer, it will be my understanding of magic and ritual that brings the prince to this realm."

Hexathelidae stood and removed her shirt, letting it fall to the ground and exposing corset and bare flesh before sauntering over to Sørian, "Why there are any number of reasons. I have operatives, I have a talent for subterfuge, and I have one thing no other woman has," she gripped Sørian's inner thigh and whispered into his ear, "An understanding of those rituals of our great lord beyond any other save you."

Sørian smiled and cupped the porcelain face, "It would seem that we are allies." She smiled back and moved her hand, crouching between his legs. As Sørain felt lust overtake him he wondered how far into the process they would get before he had to kill her.

A shooting sensation of electric ecstasy spread through his body. He smiled and muttered to himself, "Not for the next hour at least."

* * *

Fresh Air was a small restaurant in the middle of the gardens of Babylon Five with a reputation for quality food and exotic cuisine. It was the choice eatery of diplomats, traders, and businessmen. It was hard to even get a reservation, let alone bump one back four hours because but being the commander of the station had its perks. John was grateful to finally have some time to simply sit and unwind with his sister, though the Imperials had certainly gotten his adrenaline running.

"And it's certainly a big change from running the Agamemnon. It's more like being the military governor of a small self contained country," John waved his chopsticks, "You know, with it's own borders, customs, a thousand different languages, everyone coming and going at all hours. Still there's a terrific energy here, a sense of really being out on the frontier. The Imperials are just the icing on the cake."

He looked at his sister and saw the familiar sight of Liz half listening and moving things around with her chopsticks. It was the same thing she used to do when their dad told her she wouldn't be able to go out and play with the neigborhood kids and play till she finished her homework. He leaned over and looked at her food, "How's your salad?"

She looked down, "Oh, it's fine. Fine."

Something about the way she said 'fine' convinced him that it was anything but, "You don't look fine."

"It's just, we haven't seen each other in two years and from the moment I've gotten here you haven't stopped talking about work," she said exasperatedly "this is me Johnny, remember?"

"I'm sorry," John stumbled over his words, "I just, uh, seeing you again. It brings it all back."

"I know," Liz reached out and touched his hand, "That's why I'm here. Nothing has ever really been the same between us, not since Anna passed away."

"I need more time, that's all," John did not want to be discussing this.

"Johnny," Liz said calmly "It's been two years."

"Then why I still have to remind myself that she's gone? Why when I see something interesting on the news I'll say to myself. 'Oh! I've got to remember to mention this to Ann Tonight' Sometimes I will turn to say something to her. She's not there but just for a second I don't know why she's not there," John hadn't meant to snap and regretted it as soon as Liz's look of irritation appeared, "I miss her Liz, I miss her and love her as much right now as I did when she was still here."

"I know," Liz said as though explaining two plus two equals four, "It's not easy. She was my friend for a lot longer than you were married to her and I miss her too. But if she were here right now she would be mad as hell at you. She would want you to get on with your life and stop burying yourself in your work."

"It's not about work!" John slapped his chopsticks against the table.

"What's it about?"

Sheridan rubbed his fingers together, "I… I just don't want to get into this thing right now. Can we just table this for a while? Can't we just talk for a while? Get to know each other again, just catch up a little."

Hold hands, "Ok. The discussion is tabled." "Until later."

John exhaled.

* * *

Kerrigan stood in the cell where Dorn was kept in storage. The normally dark cell was lit up brightly so as not to allow any detail to escape her gaze. A small army of sensor equipped servo skulls flitted about the room, numerous needle thin sensor arrays hanging down from their undercarriages shooting out taking samples of anything suspicious.

Something that happened in this room had been worth killing two of her men. Her initial hypothesis had been that someone intended to poison the servitor with something slow acting, something to prevent it functioning at a crucial moment.

As of yet she'd managed to find a copious amount of anti-venom and restoratives added to the nutrient feeds that was outside the parameters of safe operation. The chemical content of the feed had been altered, but whatever alterations had been done seemed to be to benign affect.

"Why would kill two men to hide the fact that you were injecting antidote into a servitor… to a poison that he hasn't been infected with?"

She'd managed to track down the duty rosters and discover who was responsible for injecting the chemicals. Two of the security staff had been ordered to come into the Arco-flagellant's cell, inject an unspecified chemical into the servitor, then to leave. Unfortunately she wouldn't ever be able to question the two of them, they'd died in the decompression of the docking bay.

Backtracking who'd given the orders had proven to be similarly fruitless. No effort had been expended whatsoever to conceal the identification code of the issuer, but it seemed unlikely that Xelkk Pok had risen from the grave to start issuing orders. His command codes must never have been erased from the system. How anyone knew them or was able to use them was an equal mystery.

There were too many unknown variables to make a decision about who had done to make a decision yet. Kerrigan reached up and massaged her temples, the cool metal of her augmentic fingers felt good and soothed her troubled mind.

Once again Kerrigan started pacing around the chair, "Why? Why would anyone chose to do that? It makes no sense."

She ran a finger over the bindings on the chair, feeling for any clues at all, "The doors were accessed twice. Assuming the first group came in twice one has to wonder what took two trips. If there are two groups we have to wonder if they're working alone or together. If they aren't working together why did each group enter the room?"

A servo skull whipped past her head and stared sampling the mold growing in a corner of the room along the wall.

"If they entered separately were they aware of each other or acting independently of each other?" Kerrigan waved her arms impotently, "And why would two separate groups of people unaware of each other go though the trouble of killing two tech-priests in order to inject antivenin into a servitor in secret."

Kerrigan paused, "Unless the first one was doing something else and second assumed the first was poisoning Dorn," she shook her head, "But how would the second group know about the first group? If they did know about each other how would the second group know enough about the plans of the first group to select an antivenin? And to what purpose was any of this done?"

Kerrigan swore and grabbed the main nutrient cistern, lifting it off where it was hanging and bringing it to eye level. If the good Samaritan had assumed that adding anivenin was the proper solution to aid the servitor then it stood to reason something had been added to the cistern in order for him to jump to that conclusion. Her face reflected off the watery contents of the cistern.

There were advanced sensors back in her lab. If the cistern contained any clues she would find them.

* * *

Lennier dabbed at the waxy shell of the cocoon with a towel. He'd taken to bathing the cocoon twice a day in the purifying agents used by the Minbari to shed he outer layer of skin and remove any bacteria or impurities. It was a contemplative, meditative act. Just as well, Lennier had a lot to think about.

After the Imperials had been led out of the docking bay he'd stayed to watch the Imperial ship. His curiosity had gotten the better of him and he'd stayed to watch the baggage of the Imperials clearing customs. What he'd seen alarmed him. A handful of humanoids were carrying the bags and supplies to a pallet destined for the first contact suites. A more pitful group of humanoids Lennier had never seen.

They were shambling and foolish creatures, their limbs sawed off and replaced with crude mechanical substitutions. They seemed barely alive, responding only to the curt commands of the ship's red-suited pilot. They were twisted, warped, and hollow shells of what might once have been men. Lennier hoped he was wrong about what the half-metal men were.

However it was early and there might very well be a reasonable cultural explanation to explain why and how these twisted abattoir creatures came to be. He doubted it but there were often things he doubted that came to be. It was part of the mystery of the universe.

A fragment of shell cracked off and came with his towel. Lennier smiled and looked at it. "Soon now, soon."

Delenn would have clearer thoughts than he in this situation, he was sure of it.

* * *

Stephen was hooking up Garibaldi to the alien device when someone spoke behind him, "Doctor."

"Captain?" Stephen straightened up in surprise and turned to Captain Sheridan, "You're up late." He was unsure why the Captain was in med-bay. A sinking feeling of dread started to set in.

Had he come to prevent the use of the machine? It had seemed too easy to get him to agree to it the first time. He'd been sure the conversation would require a great deal more convincing.

"I couldn't sleep. I started thinking about life and death, what we can do, what we can't do and maybe what we should do when we have the chance." Captain Sheridan pointed to the device, "This is the device, eh'?"

"Correct, I was just about to," Stephen moved to insert his arm before the Captain could stop him. If he could just get the machine started before the Captain told him it was too dangerous to do so he could make up some techo-medical-babble reason why it was too dangerous to detach him from the machine before Garibaldi was healed. He might get

"Plug me in," the Captain cut him off, rolling up his sleeve and moving into the seat in front of the machine. It was not the response Stephen had been expecting.

Stephen blinked a couple of times as he realized what Sheridan had actually said, sputtered in surprise and said, "No, but, I thought we agreed."

"I can't have you giving your life energy and operating this machine at the same time. What would happen if you pass out during the process huh? It'll just keep taking your life energy until you're dead correct?"

"I don't know." Stephen assumed the machine had some sort of a cut off to stop the donor from passing out that but there was no guarantee.

"Exactly, It's better you're running it and someone else is at this end." The Captain nodded with insufferable satisfaction. More frustratingly he was correct.

"He's my patient!" Stephen said somewhat petulantly.

"But when I took over B5 he became my responsibility," The Captain smiled in a friendly but commanding way, "I don't think loosing my head of security in under a week of being on the station will look good on my resume."

"Alright," Stephen gave up on arguing, "we split the difference, we'll both do it in shifts but I'll go first. Have to make sure the configuration is correct."

He stuck out his hand and offered it to Sheridan, "Deal?"

"Done and done." Sheridan grabbed his hand and slapped him on the shoulder with the other one. It would seem that Earthdome had found a more than suitable stand in for Jeffrey Sinclair, at least for now.

* * *

"No Inquisitor," Hakam Danzig said as he swept through the room for the fifth time, "We have no found any listening devices so far."

The second that the doors to the modest apartments had closed the Inquisitor had ordered the Skitarii and Lionhearts to examine the room for any and all traps, secret passages, and listening devices. In fact they had been checking and re-checking the room for the better part of six hours. Were it not so crucial that they have privacy Danzig would have found the task to be tedious, but needs were musts.

He greatly wished that he could take off the pressure suit, but till the device in the Skitarii's hands checking to make sure there were no atmospheric contagions it would have to stay on. He couldn't help but look at the slowly descending numbers and think about how badly he needed to use the necessary.

"Every damn time I have to wear one of these things for hours on end," he muttered. Danzig navigated around the sofa upon which the unconscious Kroot was draped and flinched as the mastiffs growled ominously. Muzzle or no they were damn intimidating.

"Sir at this point if they've managed to hide a bug from us and have figured out how to properly translate I say let them listen. Anyone that skilled deserves to hear us," Hamman opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle, opened it and eyed the contents, "And frankly considering their taste in liquor I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. If I didn't know better I'd say this is aged amsec."

"Don't you dare think popping the seals on your helmet and drinking that till the scan's come up clean and Gazan's run a damn poison swoop over it," Fadir said in a tone of uncharacteristic sobriety. He trusted the Babylonians even less than he trusted the Inquisitor. Danzig didn't trust them either if it came down to it, "Xenos can be traded with but they can't be trusted. About the only xenos you can trust is the nids' and they aren't exactly the conversational type."

"A wise bit of advice," the Navigator was thumbing through a book of photos left on the table, "We should take nothing at face value… we should…" the navigator trailed off staring at one of the photos. He picked it up in his near translucent fingers and flipped the photo over to read the writing on the back.

"Is something wrong honored Navigator?" the Inquisitor said in a friendly tone.

"Nothing," the navigator blinked all three eyes as he pocketed the photo, "but I have a suspicion I want to test."

"What suspicion is that," asked Gazan as he spread anitseptic ointments onto the small healing cuts on Dorn's back. The still healing stitches on Dorn's side were an angry red but as of yet they hadn't suffered any infection.

"Never mind," The Navigator put the tips of his fingers together in an arch, elbows resting on his knees, "Deal with the here and now. I'd prefer to be able to verify my fits of fancy before I indulge in sharing them with others."

Danzig flinched at a loud thud, the Skitarii dropped a large tome onto the table next to the auto-savant. Jak looked up from the pages of invitations, letters and requests from the various sentient creatures on station offering audiences and requests to open trade relations to nod in thanks to the Skitarii before turning to the Inquisitor, "We're scheduled to meet with the major diplomatic forum later in the day, and a number of smaller powers have requested meetings prior to that."

"Just get the water and the star charts from whoever is willing to trade the fastest and let's get out of here," Fadir rubbed his hands together and made the sign of the aquilla, "This place feels wrong to me. There is a sensation of instability that I cannot shake."

"Daz' because the ship spins," grunted Galut helpfully. The giant leaned in close and spun one of his great sausage-like fingers in a wide circle to demonstrate what he meant. Fadir's eye twitched as he bit back a scathing retort. It would be unwise to anger the Ogryn, at best he would be cruelly insulting a mental simpleton and at worst the ogryn might take offense and tear off Fadir's head.

The Skitarii's shoulders shook as he searched the ceiling for listening devices with his mechandrites. It jiggled a bit of dust off the top of one of the lamps and onto the table in front of Danzig.

"I suspect that he mean metaphorical instability Galut," Galut stared back at the Inquisitor uncomprehending the Inquisitor's words, "It's… it's a joke Galut. Fadir made a funny joke, now go and play with the hounds. They miss you." Galut shook his head at not understanding the joke but was seemingly satisfied pet the two increasingly docile looking hounds.

Danzig shook his head. The Inquisitor continued to puzzle him. The revelation that he'd had a Kroot mercenary in his employ was not beyond belief but was substantially unexpected considering the Inquisitor's professional interest in ensuring minimal contact between humans and xenos. Sergei had some choice words on the matter when that bombshell was dropped on them.

It was just as well that the Inquisitor couldn't speak Damascan or Danzig had no doubt the Inquisitor would have gladly flayed his second in command alive.

Vira'Capac seemed like a good sort, well as good as the xenos could hope to be, but he was clearly unbalanced and unpredictable. Danzig would have to be prepared to kill the xenos if it snapped again like it had done in the corridor. The Inqusitor's reasons, as always, were no-one's but his own and were shared with none save the Skitarii and possibly Captian Sáclair. The ogryn was more than likely privy to them as well but the ogryn were prone to ignore anything not said to them directly and to remember less.

"Jak, would you be so kind as to give a political summary of the climate we've entered into. I suspect that by now reading those invitations and documents has given you at least a rough picture of whom we're dealing with," the Inquisitor walked past Danzig. Soft blue plumes of benign psychic discharge blossomed off the leads in his psychic hood, they tingled on Danzig's face as the Inquisitor passed.

Jak lifted the scroll he'd been scribbling notes on and passed it over to the Inquisitor, "They've been surprisingly candid. I suspect initiating trade relations with unknown species is a mark of status else they would be a bit more guarded. The strongest powers seem to be the Alliance, the Minbari, the Narn, and the Centauri. It was the Centauri that we made contact with first."

"Why do you assume that they are the strongest powers?" Calven's simpering voice rang out. The Navigator had a unique talent for wording a reasonable question in the smarmiest of ways.

"Because they talk about opening trade in very open and direct terms. The wording of their letters is structured in such a way that it's clear it never even began to occur to them to approach us as anything but equals. The other nations, ones less sure if they will have something we want or if they could stop an invasion, talk in terms of opening friendship and trading culture," The savant tapped on a part of the page the Inquisitor was holding, "See? It's quite simple really, a nation that believes it needs nothing from you will try to negotiate from a position of strength or outright indifference."

"A reasonable deduction," the Inquisitor nodded and tapped his hand against the ceramic armor on his legs, "but what is this note right here?" He pointed to a series of scrawling repetitions of the same word with tally marks beneath them. Danzig tried and failed to read the crunched gothic script of the savant. It wouldn't be uncommon for a savant to write notes in code but Danzig suspected this was more of an issue of penmanship than secrecy.

Jak's face lit up, "That is a riddle I've been trying to puzzle out. We keep getting asked about our connections with someone called the "First Ones." Sometimes people are asking if we are one of these "First Ones," others are asking if we've met them. They're also curious for our knowledge of something called a Vorlon."

"A what?" Hamman had poured a glass of the amsec and was staring at the chronometer waiting for an all clear. Danzig shot him a murderous look to which he bristled and spoke in calm but angry Damascan, "I haven't drunk it yet and if we don't get the all clear I wont, but there's no harm in pouring a glass," then switched back into gothic as though nothing happened, "What is a Vorlon?"

Jak blinked at the sudden string of Damascan but shook his head and continued, "It is, well that is to say they are… to be honest I haven't a clue what they are. There is a domain called the Vorlon Empire at the edge of space. Presumably the Vorlons are very powerful and important and I suppose not much is known about them. They must be especially secretive for them to be willing to ask perfect strangers for any scrap of information they know on the subject."

Danzig grunted. He wasn't spectacularly fond of the xenos species he knew; the addition of a new, unknown and enigmatic species did not lift his mood. He felt for the ceramic knives hidden in the copious silk sleeves of his shirt to reassure himself that he was armed, however lightly. It was at least some comfort.

Gazan smiled as the chronometer chimed, "Well lads, the air is breathable and the viral and bacterial content of the station is well within the tolerances of the standard inoculations. Pop the helemets if you will," Gazan raised a hand and stopped Hamman from removing his helmet, "If you take that off and try to drink that without first running it under a poison sweep, throne help me, I will cause you pain."

"I would suggest," Navigator Calven started, "That we continue to wear pressure suits outside this apartment, at least till I've had a chance to test my theory."

The Inquisitor gave the Navigator an inscrutable look and said something in an archaic variant of High Gothic that Danzig couldn't even begin to place. The Navigator had no such difficulties. His three eyes narrowed and the smiled slightly, "Perhaps Inquisitor, perhaps. Play the role of the "enigmatic stranger" for now. I suspect you're well practiced at it."

The Inquisitor nodded and once again Danzig got a sinking feeling that the Inqusitor's plans were once again seated on the razor's edge, "We should keep some of our party in the quarters to ensure that no devices are placed inside while we are gone. Danzig, Gazan, Calven, Cairn, the servitor, and I will proceed to the meetings as planned. The rest of you will stay here. Jak I want you to keep running over local history. I don't want any surprises."

"Wise Inquisitor," Calven nodded, "I concur."

The Navigator and the Inqusitor were agreeing. Eye of Horus that was bad.

* * *

The stack of diplomatic reports just barely balanced on her knee as Na'Toth swiped her ID card at the entrance to G'Kar's chambers. Every day since he'd left she would gather all the diplomatic reports and missives, look through them, and leave them in a stack on G'Kar's desk. It was a thankless and mundane task considering that there was no ambassador to read them, but she didn't want to risk falling out of the habit of doing so else she might forget her job when he returned.

G'Kar's quarters were pitch black. The computer must have switched off the lights to save power since she was last in the room. Rather than search around in the dark Na'Toth stood at the door reading the data-slate from the light of the hallway. Her eyes strained to read in the dull light.

"Close the door," Na'toth looked up in surprise. There was already someone in the room.

"Close," the dim red light of the room flickered on revealing a tall, broad Narn in a slightly battered shirt sitting on the bed. It was ambassador G'Kar, looking more terrified and despondent than she had ever seen him.

The ambassador grasped the bridge of his nose between leather gauntleted thumb and forefinger and sighed, "Weep for the future Na'toth, weep for us all."

"Are you alright?" It wasn't the most eloquent thing to say but Na'Toth was at a loss for something more elegant to say.

"I have looked into the Darkness Na'Toth. You cannot do that and ever be the same again. When you told me about the destruction of our base at quadrant 37 I knew that only a major power could attempt an assault of that magnitude. But none of the governments here could have done it, which left only two possibilities. A new race or an old race… a very old race," the Ambassador picked up a well worn prayer book and flipped to a page showing a spidery black ship and a hunched skull faced figure with horns, "Ga'Quan spoke of a great war long ago against an enemy so terrible it nearly overwhelmed the stars themselves. Ga'Quan said that before that enemy was thrown down it dwelled in the systems at the rim of known space."

Na'Toth pursed her lips. The veracity of the ancient superstitions of her people were at times suspect, for every nugget of truth in the holy books of the Narn there were ten bits of history long since disproved by science. However something about G'Kar's tone didn't seem to be leaving the matter up for discussion.

"I searched for days, going from one system to another." The ambassador stared at a point in the distance, "Then in the dark deserted worlds where there should be no life, where no living thing has walked in over a thousand years something was moving, gathering its forces quietly, quietly. Hoping to go unnoticed."

His voice filled with sadness and he choked on his own words, "We must warn the others Na'Toth. After a thousand years the darkness has come again."

* * *

It was dark and warm. That was the first thought in a long time, it was dark and warm and she needed to get out. She couldn't remember how she got there. She couldn't remember why she was there but it was very important that she get out.

She shifted her arms and found that they weren't moving. She tried to shift her legs and it was the same. She tried to scream for help but found that a barrier of some viscous semi-permeable fluid blocked her.

She was alone, it was dark and she was afraid. She struggled with all her might, pressing at the walls as hard as she could till finally, blessedly, the walls started to give way. She clawed, kicked, beat and screamed her way out of he tiny prison she was in.

The soft inner flesh of the walls burst and she crawled through, gasping and screaming at the pain of it. She laid on the floor, naked and sobbing in pain for a couple minutes before she even remembered her own name.

Delenn, her name was Delenn. She grabbed the thin cotton robe and winced and at how it chafed her cracked and changing flesh. Had someone forced her to enter the cocoon. No…entering the cocoon was her will an the will of no other. It was her choice and her following of prophecy.

Even as she felt her legs scream with the pain of standing and her skin cracked and bled with scaly grey tumors she knew that what she had done, what she had allowed herself to become was necessary. Her pain was necessary.

She winced again as he legs gave out and she hunched in the corner. Her pain was necessary but she would not lament it's passing. How long had it been? Days? Weeks? Months? Kosh hadn't been clear on the specifics of the device only on the necessity of its use.

Her body burned in agony as she looked at her hands and tried not to recoil at the sight of the scaly and twisted growths covering her body. How was this part of the great plan? Understanding was of course unimportant, only obedience mattered.

Obedience to fate mattered.

* * *

Michael Garibaldi woke with a start, groaning and trying to shake the grogginess out of his head. His entire body felt like it was stuffed with cotton, sluggish and slow. He tried to lift his head up, winced from the pain of it and simply rested it back on the bed. It was bad. It was very bad.

"Hi" the soothing voice of Dr. Franklin was music to his ears. He must be in medical, but how did he get there? He was doing something. Something important. What was he doing?

Michael groaned in pain, "Yo, what's up Doc?"

Dr. Franklin shook his head at the terrible pun and tapped his link, "Franklin to Ivanova, I think you and the Captain need to get down to med-lab. Garibaldi's awake."

His link crackled and Susan's voice echoed over the communicator, "On our way."

Michael looked at the ceiling and realized with mounting clarity and dread exactly where he was and exactly how he'd gotten there. He stared at the ceiling, "My god. They're going to do it, they're really going to do it. They're going to kill the President."

He had to tell someone before it was too late.

* * *

Donat found himself growing to like the Belzafesters. Screening them for heretical materials or genetic abnormalities was transpiring to be far less onerous of a task than he'd feared it might be. It wasn't a complex process, each survivor would have to walk through one of the medical scanners in order to be examined and would submit what few belongings they had to search. They would all have to go through this process once a week for the next several months, just to ensure that none of Faust's abnormally altered half-breeds had managed to sneak onboard.

There was some minor grumbling about how irritating it was to do them once a week but by and large the Belzafesters were so grateful to be alive that without prompting all of them would line up and submit their belongings to search. Donat only wished their enthusiasm was matched by their skill. Amateur soldiers made poor sailors. The crewmen assigned to supervise the Belzafester's on work duty were having to teach them basic survival skills for onboard life that it had never occurred to them would be necessary to explain.

The common joke on-ship was that the Belzafesters were like the Ogryn, strong, friendly, loyal, and dumb as a post. Hopefully that would be solved with time and for the moment the Belzafester's lack of understanding the crew's odd gothic variant was serving as a barrier to them taking offense.

"I've been talking with the Magos about simply putting up these sensors at every major junction on the ship," Osma said as he watched yet another Belzafester amble through the medical sensors, "I suspect it might cut down on shipboard crime."

"It only scans the bodies of humans for genetic abnormalities, not for stolen goods."

"Aiwa," Osma puffed at a thin cigarette, "but we can track who is entering and leaving the various sections of the ship. It won't be practical in the higher radiation areas or the areas close to the hull but it ought to help with the commercial sectors."

"Do what you will Osma," Donat watched the stream of people walking through the scanners with mild disinterest, "Security is your specialty not mine."

"Your mind is on the on your daughter," Osma shrugged his shoulders, "She'll be well and with you soon Insh'Emparator. Inta famat?"

"Yes I understand," Donat shook his head, "But if the Inquisitor can't get potable water to the ship it won't matter. We'll start dying of thirst in a matter of days, if that."

"I will not become some shadowy Ghul of a what I once was," Osama shook his head, "The Inquisitor will get the water. It is the Emperor's plan, he wills it and we make it so."

"With all the death we've seen lately how can you believe that?" Donat fidgeted with the pocket watch at his side, "How can you believe all that death was the Emperor's will?"

"With all the lives we've saved how can you not?" Osma's lips quirked behind his beard and he waved his open arms to the many thousands of Belzafesters lined in front of them. Donat smiled politely but the burden of the watch in his waistcoat was still weighing down on his mind and on his heart.

* * *

"Garibaldi," Dr. Franklin shone a blinding light into Michael's eyes. The brightness caused a sharp pain to lance up into his head. He looked pleadingly to Susan and the other Earthforce officer behind her.

Michael groaned and shifted trying to find a comfortable position on the stiff bed that didn't cause the wound in his back to throb, "Uh, yeah?"

"How are you feeling?" Doctors always seemed to feel the need to ask the most bindingly stupid questions. How was he feeling? He'd just been shot in the back! 'Dancing, he damn well felt like dancing.' It would show Dr. Franklin… no there would be no time for that. He had something vital to say.

He waved Dr. Franklin away, "That's not important. Just stop them, they've come to kill the president." Sinclair would be able to get on gold channel and warn the President's security detail of the danger if Dr. Franklin would just let him go. He could worry about being wounded later.

"I'm afraid the President's dead. Earthdome is saying it was an accident," Franklin continued to check Michael's vitals as Michael felt his heart sink and his head spin.

"Oh no, no, no I gotta see the Commander," Michael tried to sit upright. His entire back felt like it was lit on fire and he wobbled around.

Dr. Franklin grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him to lie down, "He's not here, alright? He's been reassigned."

"What?" stars danced in front of Michaels eyes, "Oh God, I'm out of it for a few days and the whole place goes to hell."

A man in an Earthforce captain's uniform standing next to the bed cleared his throat and walked forward. He was broad shouldered and of average height but carried himself with the sort of swagger that implied he was used to giving orders and having them obeyed willingly. Sinclair would have called it nonchalant authority. The uniformed man spoke, "Well I hope I can prove otherwise. Captian John Sheridan, your new CO."

"I don't know you." Michael's voice turned to stone. He was in no mood for making new friends.

"No," the man chuckled in a friendly manner, undeterred by Michael's cold manner, "But I think we'll get along just fine."

Susan interjected apparently eager to change the subject, "Garibaldi, I know you're tired but do you remember what happened? Do you remember who shot you?"

"I… I keep trying," he could never remember more than shadowy fragments of memories, a face, a feeling, a word. He remembered everything but the most important detail, the face of the man who shot him, "No, I… I don't remember. I was shot from behind. I never saw him."

Michael rested his head down on the pillow and looked into the distance. The second in command of security, Jack, was standing at the door. He was eying Michel with an expression of friendly concern. Michael nodded to him. Jack smiled and saluted before leaving the medical bay.

* * *

The Imperials were insufferably obtuse and insular. After Sheridan had shown them to their quarters they had firmly but politely insisted on total privacy till their scheduled meetings with the various Ambassadors. The utter indifference shown to the might of the Centauri Republic was staggering, they'd never been impolite but the Imperials gave him the distinct impression that they were sizing the threat he represented at all times.

At least that's what he thought they were doing. There was some comfort at least in knowing that they races of the Empire were not in total unity, the altercation with the birdlike one was proof enough of that. Still the Centaurum could provide him with no more information upon which to operate in determining how to deal with the Imperials, at least till the ship responsible for first contact made it's way to the Centauri home world and was properly debriefed.

It was a step up from the utterly inscrutable Vorlon Ambassador to be sure but the faceless, expressionless pressure suits favored by the Imperils were hardly ideal for reading into body language. Negotiations would probably be nearly as frustrating as negotiating with the Gaim or the Vree.

Londo rounded the corner and saw a familiar mottled orange head. Londo blinked in surprise and ran to catch up with Ambassador G'Kar, "Ah Ambassador G'Kar, back from your little expedition I see. Did you find anything interesting?"

The Narn Ambassador stopped and turned to Mollari with an expression of solemn interest, "Yes I'm going to call for a meeting of the Council to discuss it."

"Oh?" Londo felt his hearts catch in his throat. G'kar couldn't know about quadrant 37 could he? No. If he knew about that he wouldn't bother with pleasantries, he would simply choke the life out of Londo.

"Mollari, the grievances between my people and yours can never be resolved except with Centauri blood, accept that as a given," G'Kar said in a friendly tone, apparently trying to be reconciliatory.

"Well its good to know we're appreciated," Londo quirked a generous eyebrow. The nerve of it, really!

"But there may be some dangers that threaten both our worlds, not to mention the Minbari, the Eathers, the Leauge, and everyone else around here," G'kar waved his hand vaguely, "Except possibly the Vorlons I don't know what could threaten them really very soon Ambassador I may require your help, in the interests of all our governments."

"Help? My help" Londo put his hands to chest in astonishment, "Well this is astonishing. Have you spoken to the others?"

"No I was just on my way to speak with Delenn." G'Kar turned to walk towards the Minbari ambassador's quarters.

Londo snorted, "Ah well, you may find that rather difficult at the moment. You see just after you left something happened to her."

"Is she still alive?" G'kar turned round in surprise.

"That is a very good question."

* * *

The weather in Geneva was as pleasant as one could hope for. A an urge to skive off his next couple of meetings in order to properly enjoy a smooth summer breeze and a cup of proper European coffee at one of the numerous small birstros along the cobblestones of the old town nagged at the back of his head as Stepehen Kevin Dexter in the Presidential office of Earthdome, the seat of power in the Earth Alliance. It had been a long time since anyone had called Stephen by his given name. It had been a long time since anyone even knew what it really was.

Given names indicated camaraderie and availability, neither of which was useful to a Psi Cop. Stephen Dexter was only known as Alfred Bester, even to those in the inner circle of the Psi Core, and to all but precious few was Mr. Bester.

Even his friends called him Bester rather than Alfred, or they would if Bester allowed himself to have friends. Friends would have been a distraction. Mr. Bester hated distractions.

Mr. Bester was one of the many government employees whose position was devoted entirely to the capture and rehabilitation of rouge telepaths. It was a task at which he excelled. At some point in the future, and Mr. Bester hoped the near future, it would be psychics and not normal who held control over Earthgov, but for now he was content to simply rule over his own little fiefdom in Psi Core.

Psi Core was left to its own devices, mostly, provided that it occasionally assisted Earthgov in the commission of some of its more esoteric agendas. Always off the books, of course, the Earth Alliance did not condone the commission of assassinations, unauthorized mind wipes, or arbitrary deep mental scans. At least it did not do so on paper. There were always politicians who were willing to barter outside the lines of what was strictly legal.

Bester's unofficial position within the Psi Core was the commission of these more esoteric deals. He didn't tell command what he and his subordinates were doing and they didn't ask. All he did he did for the core. The core was mother. The core was father. He was the core.

It was in the service of the core that he'd come into an agreement with the former Vice President, now president Clarke. Clarke was a man of conviction and a man of prejudice. He was part of the old school of isolationism that had actually led to the creation of the Psi Core. Even without scanning him he could feel the man's distaste for being in a room with a psychic.

William Morgan Clarke's smooth voice was tinted with the soft Midwestern twang that had gotten him elected as a senator ten times. It was the sort of voice that could tell you that you needed to be taxed twice as much and you'd believe it without question, "Mr. Bester it would seem that we have a new complication in the works."

"Do we Mr. President?" Bester adjusted his uniform slightly. It was unseasonably hot in the room.

"Yes we darn well do," the president reached into the mahogany desk and pulled out a thick folder of papers. Clarke had to be one of the only people left on the planet who insisted upon having all his reports printed out on paper rather than using a data pad, "It looks like we've got trouble on the horizon. I assume you've heard about the Imperials already? The Psi Core is always well informed, you more than most."

Heard about it? The covert intelligence community was overflowing with rumors about the Imperials. A new power popping out of the blue and starting off their tenure by attacking a Minbari ship in defense of an Earthforce station. The official report stated that the Trigati had enacted a self-destruct to avoid the shame of surrender but nobody was letting a little thing like the truth get in the way of a good story.

"I'm aware of numerous rumors Mr. President. Each more improbable than the last."

"Well," the President pulled out a sheet of paper and passed it to Bester, "It turns out that some of the most ridiculous sounding parts of it are true. They do use psychics instead of sending Tachyon transmissions and their ships are shielded by some sort of an energy barrier."

"Is this confirmed?" Bester tried not to seem too excited by the idea of long-range psychic communications but knew he was failing badly. Psi Core had long been researching the possibility of long-range psychic communication but as of yet the most they'd managed was a few miles.

"As confirmed as I can hope for our operatives on the Centauri home world to make it," Clarkesipped at a cup of coffee, "They haven't gotten the ship that made first contact back to the home world but they've apparently restarted funding to some projects abandoned by the Psychic's Guild some thousand years ago. The Centauri aren't exactly the type for radical progressive thought."

"And what do you want from me Mr. President?" Bester sensed the President's motives but caution was always warranted.

"I want you to acquire this technology however you can. Beg, trade, borrow, steal, but don't let it fall into the hands of the Centari or the Minbari before us. We can't let them develop a substantial military advantage over us any more than we can allow ourselves to lag behind these Imperials," he raised a finger, "but do not antagonize the Imperials more than is absolutely necessary. I want this tech but I don't want it bad enough to start another war."

"Of course," Bester smiled widely and nodded to Clark, pretending not to feel the stabbing sensation of hatred as they shook hands goodbye. The man truly loathed anything different.

* * *

Delenn's suite smelled odd, there was a sickly sweet odor of copper and cinnamon in the air that made Lennier's nose twitch. He sneezed and walked towards the cocoon, the now _broken _cocoon. Lennier's breath caught in his throat.

Was she ok?

He approached the cocoon and looked inside at the orange semi-luminescent fluids of the cocoon.

The floor squshed under his feet as he bent over to pick up a brittle fibrous bit of broken cocoon shell. Ichors dripped off the sides of the still warm bit of cocoon. A million thoughts and fears ran through Lennier's mind. He'd feared and anticipated this moment for so long but not that it was here he was unsure what to do.

A soft voice groaned in pain and Lennier froze.

"Lennier." Lennier dropped the shell and rushed over to the huddled shape in the corner. Delenn was pitiful looking, twitching and shivering beneath a thin priests' robe of course cotton fibers. He reached out to touch her and she recoiled.

"Delenn?" Lennier felt cold fear in the pit of his stomach.

Delenn reached out with a hand covered in thick grey scales, "Help me"

Lennier grabbed her hand and stands her up looking at her face in horror. Every inch of exposed flesh was covered in thick painful grey growths. The grey matter covered even her eyelids.

"Delenn, what have you done to yourself?" Lennier said as he helped her hobble over to a wide sofa.

"I have done what is necessary." Delenn said in a not entirely convincing tone.

"I'll get the Doctor!" Lennier knew of several good Minbari surgeons who were passing through the station, any of which would gladly assist a member of the Grey Council like Delenn.

"Dr. Franklin. You will get Dr. Stephen Franklin." Delenn winced as she adjusted herself on the sofa.

"Dr. Franklin?" Lennier stopped walking over to the comms, "You would not prefer one of our…"

"Understanding is not necessary Lennier," Delenn's voice cut across him, "It will be Dr. Franklin."

"Very well," Lennier shook his head and thumbed the communicator. After only a few seconds the serious face of the doctor popped onscreen.

"Yes," the doctor blinked in mild surprise when he saw Lennier. It would not be necessary for Lennier to submit to a station required medical examination for some time.

"Dr. Franklin, would you please come to Ambassador Delenn's quarters at once." Lennier paused, considering how much more to say over the open comms.

"Well I'm kind of in the middle of things, Mr. Garibaldi is awake," Of course the chief of security would pick now of all times to come back to the land of the living. It was in keeping with the man's dreadful sense of humor.

"Please it is urgent. I think something may be wrong with Ambassador Delenn." Lennier winced as the words came out of his mouth. He should not have even said that much but he needed the doctor to come.

Dr. Franklin's jaw dropped, "Of course I'll be right over."

"Hurry," Lennier deactivated the communicator and winced as Delenn cried in pain again then said again to himself quietly, "In Valen's name please hurry."

* * *

The translation computer was bulky and impractical. It ought to have been phased out of military production ten years ago when the Higashi Corporation had come out with the newer, sleeker model 45's but there was no money in the operations budget to replace it. It was a device mono-tasked with the automatic and, at least theoretically, seamless translation of one language to another in near real time. It allowed for initial negations while two species learned each other's languages but it had a disturbing aspect of ventriloquism to it that unnerved Susan.

However at the moment the only thing about it that seemed revenant was it's substantial weight. Exactly which engineer decided the device required sufficient mass to have it's own small orbit deserved a punch in the nose.

Someone needed to bring the heavy machine down to test it on the Imperials then carry it back to the bridge to tweak anything that needed to be tweaked. Sheridan reasoned it should be someone of importance to bring it to them so they didn't feel they were being ignored. As he had business with his sister it had fallen to Susan to carry the heavy box halfway across the station.

Susan nodded briefly to the Babylon 5 security forces around the door before thumbing the door-chime. After a few moments the door swung open and she came face to mask with one of the Imperials. The Imperial stood staring at her in silence, unmoving.

"Hi," Susan started awkwardly, "I'm here to bring the translator."

The Imperial stared and said nothing, crossing his arms and tapping his fingers on his arm in apparent disinterest. His crimson silks draped elegantly over thick ceramics and Mylar-encased steel. He stood utterly immobile and dispassionate.

"You don't speak a word of English do you," Said Susan, feeling slightly stupid that she'd entirely forgotten the reason why she was carrying the heavy computer. Damn, she would have to speak in Interlac. She was terrible at Interlac, she managed to say "Me, enter room?" before a voice inside yelled out, "Permissum suus ineo. Is est erwartete."

The man at the door stepped away and Susan rushed into the room, placing the heavy computer on the table. One of the gold and crimson suited guards giggled and said something to his companions. She was reasonably sure that if she'd hit him he would have deserved it for whatever he said.

Apparently his superior officer agreed with Susan. He said something in a flowing airy language that did not sound congratulatory. It sounded suspiciously familiar to Susan for some reason.

The translator, Jak, hobbled over from a back room and Susan caught a glimpse of something that made her blood run cold. A full-chested woman was being lifted out of a crate and onto the bed, her eyes glassed over and her head lolling backwards and forwards at an unnatural angle. She was naked and bound in chains but unmistakably human.

The room spun as Susan heard the Jak say, "Is this the translation computer?" in interlac.

Susan blinked and tried to tear her gaze away from the woman being lifted out of the crate by the large metal man with the tentacles, "Yes... that is the device."

"We are to test its ability to translate yes?" Everyone else seemed to be totally unaware that the woman was being taken out of the suitcase else were ignoring it as though it were of no consequence. God what kind of creatures were these Imperials?

"Yes. Just flip the switch," Susan stuttered out in Inerlac, her eyes still fixed on the woman on the bed as the metal man pulled out a thin scalpel and started to slice into her chest, "Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Susan slid past the skull masked Imperial Ambassador, Hilder, and faced the metal man, the translator could burn in hell for all she cared, "You have a hell of a lot of explaining to do."

"I suspect," the metallic monotone English of the translator module reverberated against the thick tones of the Imperial language, "There has been a slight cultural mismatch. The woman is dead, long dead."

"Then why are you carrying her corpse around with you," she pointed to the metal man, "And why is, stop shaking your damn shoulders at me! Why is the iron giant trying to cut her open?" Susan blanched, "You aren't carrion eaters are you? That wasn't in any of your transmissions."

Ambassador Hilder laughed, "We do not consume the flesh of our own," his gaze strayed to the sullen looking beaked creature and his hounds, "…well most of us do not anyway and hunter Vira'Capac only eats what he kills himself. The meat puppet serves another purpose entirely."

"Meat puppet?" Susan blanched. The armored man had pressed a button on the woman's chest. The flesh split neatly down the middle exposing a mesh of organs and mechanical devices. His deceptively nimble fingers manipulated the flesh and machine, making the body twitch and groan grotesquely. The Imperials disregarded this bizarre tableau with the air that one might ignore the janitor sweeping the floors.

"Ah, that did not translate through the machine. No matter, it's function is what you need to understand. It serves as a body so that those who are far away may still interact physically with us through an avatar," The man pulled out a remote from a fold in his jacket and pressed a button. Out of the confines of his luggage an alarming humanoid skull covered in metal bits and bobs floated out hovered over to Hilder, "You see we do not waste the dead needlessly. The dead serve the Emperor just as surely as the living."

He caressed the skull with a finger, it wobbled slightly and hovered away from his finger chitterling angrily at the attention, "We use the shells of men once their souls are gone for numerous tasks. The puppet on the mattress will serve as an avatar to the Captain."

"I… see," Susan started, "They chose to do this then? After they die?" The skull was flitting about her head cooing in a bizarre warbling speech. She would very much have liked to grab it and smash it against the table.

"The process doesn't always require a living subject no," Hilder pressed the remote again. The skull whipped past Susan. She winced as she felt the tug of a few stray hairs that had gotten caught in the machines hanging probes.

Susan froze. Doesn't _always_ require a living subject? "How often are the subjects alive?"

"Now is not the time for such unpleasant talk," Hilder cocked his head and the red and crimson guards moved within arms reach of Susan. They smiled but their taught posture warned Susan she was treading on dangerous ground, "If you wish for the secrets of the flesh you will have to talk with the Machine God ambassador when she arrives. I must confess the specifics of the process aren't known to me." He waved in the direction of the metallic man with his hands still half buried in the woman's torso, "Our current representative of the most honorable Omassiah has taken a vow of silence and is thus unable to answer such questions."

Susan nodded unconvinced but held her tongue. She would be taking this matter up with the captain. The implications of long-term relations with this species needed to be better assessed, "Very well Ambassador if you say so but we really must continue with testing the translator, I will need you to speak in front of the Translator. Call it a cultural exchange. It's best to have as few surprises as possible before the actual negotiations Ambassador."

The three-eyed man in the clear helmet snorted, "Ambassador. Honestly you, an _ambassador_. How amusing!"

Hilder said in a dangerous tone, "Ambassador is an acceptable substitute for my title Navigator."

"Call a _grox_ a _grox_. You're a _Thron verflucht_ _Inkvizitor_." The translator skipped over a small burst of complex spoken Imperial Gothic.

"Daul Hilder _Thron verflucht_ _Inkvizitor_ in service of the throne and seeker of heresy, to be precise," The skull helmeted man said scathingly towards the three eyed man, "And I will thank you to be silent for the rest of this meeting Navigator Calven."

"And why are you here…_ Thron verflucht_ _Inkvizitor_ Daul Hilder?" The red uniformed guards got a fit of the giggles and Susan suspected that she ought to have stuck with calling him Ambassador.

Hilder paused as though considering his response, "Right now? I am seeking water, I will deal with the rest as it comes. My true calling is the discovery if heresy."

"I see," Susan said through tight lips and a forced smile _Heresy _that was a word of ill omen to the Russian Jew. She shoved the dark thoughts about pogroms and "pure blood" to the back of her mind and held up the list of words, "These are the phrases I'll need to check with you. Please inform me if there are any errors or offensive translations in any of these words please."

It would take an hour to go through all the basic vocabulary and grammar in order to calibrate the device. It was just long enough for Susan to figure out exactly how much of an earful she was planning on giving the Captain about putting a tighter security detail on these damned Imperials.

* * *

Within seconds of pressing the button to activate the door it had opened, revealing the uncharacteristically hard faced Lennier. Even the man's crest of bone along his head seemed sterner and more angular than usual, "Dr. Franklin, before we can allow you to proceed I must insist anything you learn here in the next few minutes be kept in the strictest of confidence. "

"Of course," Stephen patted at the bag strapped over his shoulder. It was heavy and he was eager to put it down, "You have my word… but if she's sick I'm surprised you didn't call in one of your own doctors."

"I'm not ill doctor," the ragged voice of Delenn splintered out from under her hood haphazardly. She was hunched over on one of the Spartan sofas favored by the Minbari and looking all the worse for wear. She tried to stand and bow, the standard Minbari greeting but only managed a weak wobble before collapsing back onto the sofa.

Lennier and Stephen rushed to Delenn to help steady her where she was sitting. Stephen flinched slightly at the fibrous scaly feel of her cracked skin. "What I have become… what I suffer… requires you alone," Delenn stared him in the eyes with absolute and unwavering faith in him.

As Stephen stared at what he could only even begin to guess were tumors he could not feel a similar confidence in his abilities. The Minbari physiology wasn't as well known within human medical circles as the other humanoid species. Races tended to prefer doctors of their own species, and the Minbari were more insular than most. Dr. Franklin was ostensibly one of the experts on xenobiology and he couldn't think of a single disease on record that could come close to having the same symptoms. He massaged one of the growths between his fingers and it peeled away, revealing soft pink flesh covered in ichor.

"Is… is it supposed to do that?" Stephen said lamely.

The conviction in Delenn's eyes wavered, "I do not know."

Stephen pulled out a medical scanner and put it up to Delenn's chest as she twitched with another convulsion of pain. She is twisted and groaned muttering, "What am I? What am?" as she curled into the fetal position.

* * *

The Commander's quarters weren't luxurious but in the space of a couple weeks John liked to think he'd done a good job of making it very homey. A couple of creature comforts, old maps, some war trophies from his adventures, and a set of overstuffed chairs had done wonders in making the drab grey space more cheerful. With Liz curled up in one of the chairs all they needed was a roaring fire and some reruns of "Rebo and Zooty" and it would be just like Saturdays back at the old farmhouse in Iowa.

"Well granted I get stir crazy sometimes but the wonderful thing is if I want to see aliens I don't have to go looking for them, they come here. All I have to do is go out that door down two levels, and there's always something new," John poured a generous measure of brandy into two glasses and walked over to the overstuffed chairs, " Some new race I've never heard of and never seen."

"Like these Imperials I've been hearing about on ISN?" Liz smiled wryly and John had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. ISN had spent the better part of the past week running wildly sensationalist stories speculating on the Imperials and their apparent paranoid protection of the Babylon station.

"Yes," John sipped at the brandy and savored the slight burn of it as it slid down his throat, "Just like the Imperials."

"Are they really eight feet tall with three eyes and beaks?" Liz said in a would be casual voice that did not conceal the excitement in her eyes. John wasn't the only one in the family with a thirst for the new and the unknown. You don't become a teacher if you don't enjoy learning.

"Only the one of them had three eyes that I saw, but they mostly wore masks that concealed their faces. Near as we've been able to tell they're actually a collection of different races," he chuckled, "It's like dealing with a more organized version of the League," he sipped at his glass again, "hopefully I won't accidentally threaten to steal their children a second time."

"You didn't!" Liz squealed covering her mouth with her hands.

John shook his hands and sighed, "I did. Honestly, how was I supposed to know the lizard-hound creatures weren't his pets but his children? They send over no biological information about themselves other than a list of potential pathogens they might be carrying and give no warning at all."

"I suppose he didn't like that."

"Tried to tear my throat out," he looked at Liz's incredulous expression, "No really, bared claws and all. The big one had to knock him out and carry his dogs in his arms."

"Well you're having a fun time of it."

"The only thing that could make it better is if Anna were here to share it."

Liz smiles sadly, "And with that scientist mind of hers, she would have loved it."

Sheridan nursed his drink and felt his face sour. Liz reached out and grabbed John's hand, "What is it Johnny?"

"Damn it Liz, its my fault she's not here," the words poured out before John had even realized he'd said them. He didn't want to say them but he needed to say it out loud to someone for once. He needed to get it out of his system.

"Oh Johnny stop that," Liz's teacher voice cracked into action, "You've been carrying this guilt for two years. She died on a deep space exploration vessel that exploded. You had nothing to do with that."

"No but I'm responsible for her being on that ship in the first place," John choked back tears, "We were going to get together on our Anniversary. She'd arranged to meet me when we pulled into space dock off of Centauri Prime," he waved his hand, "We hadn't seen much of each other the year before. You know what the military life is like."

Long days, bad pay, and lots of danger, it had all seemed worth it with Ann.

"Well I'd gotten real busy. I was up to my ears in inspections, drills, I had to call her and tell her I couldn't make it," John swigged his drink.

He coughed as it burned in the back of his throat, "I was too busy."

John stood up and stared at Liz before walking to liquor cabinet, "Too damn busy. Well right after I canceled she too that science officer's job on the Icarus. 'Just a two week survey' she said she'd be back before I even noticed she was gone."

He strode back to his seat, "Well she didn't come back, and I've been noticing she's been gone every minute of every day."

"You can't blame yourself Johnny," Liz shook her head sadly.

"Yes I can," Liz just didn't understand, she couldn't, "If I hadn't canceled out, if I hadn't driven her away she'd be here right now. But the thing is, the real killer is when we used to talk to each other over long distance we would say I love you at the end. The last time I talked to her, I don't know I was rushed… I didn't say it. I didn't even realize it," he choked on his own words, "And I figured I'd make it up to her later on. I never even got to say goodbye to her."

Liz leaned in and hugged him. Sheridan felt tears in his eyes, "Oh Lizzie I miss her. I just didn't want her to go without telling her I loved her one last time."

* * *

The use of astropathic puppets always unnerved Sáclair. It was similar to the method by which Sáclair communed with the ship but was nothing other than a pale shadow of the experience of being one with the ship. Sáclair's senses were dulled though the avatar, there was always a sense of lethargy. It was as though every thought and movement he took was done while wading through a thick syrupy mess. In fact out of his vast collection of previous lives only those memories from the life of Hezekiah the Unsound seemed to indicate anything but utter hatred for the use of astropathic puppets.

Little by little he felt the great throne of the _Endless Bounty_ disappearing from beneath him into a dull numb nothingness. The Navigators assured him that the nothingness was only the delay between sending and receiving sensory feedback from the puppet but every second of nothingness felt like a small death. Sáclair always feared that one day he might fall into that darkness and never come out.

Something was resisting him. Trying to force his mind away from where it wished to go. The presence was strong, but not strong enough to drown out the entire astropathic choir performing in concert. It struggled against him but was swept away with the tidal wave of will.

Blissfully Sáclair felt the numb tingles of sensation as the muscles of the puppet synched with the psychic projection of his mind. It would be a few minutes before he was able to move anything. Sáclair tried to absorb his surroundings as he waited for his body to respond to his commands.

Sounds, garbled at first, filtered into his hearing, "Ambassador your translator is not malfunctioning. That is what I said."

The disjointed half-speech half-mechanical translation of an alien voice speaking in a baroque language chattered back rudely, "My apologies then Ambassador. Allow me to rephrase. I didn't really want to know. 'Is that a corpse?' I was altogether too absorbed with the more pressing question why have you found it necessary to drag the corpse into my apartments? A pretty corpse is still a corpse."

"Ambassador I assure you that," the smarmy voice of Calven started.

"Assure, cajole, promise, do whatever you feel is necessary," the scornful voice replied, "But get that festering pile of flesh out of my room. The Centauri Republic will not stand for such insults. The indignity of it."

Sinclair opened his eyes and squinted in he direction of the scornful voice. At a height of at least a thirty centimeters shorter than anyone else in the room stood an officious looking pudgy humanoid. His features were hawk like and his currently bared teeth were abnormally pointed and flashing at the Inquisitor. It was a bit like watching one of the sparrows that were so fond of roosting in the high places on the _Endless Bounty_ cursing at a hawk. Sáclair found himself instantly liking the man, "I don't give a damn what is customary on your homeworld Ambassador Hilder. If you do not remove this corpse at once I will remove every one of you from this room, this station, and this galaxy even if I have to carry your ship on my back and paddle it out to the rim of space while holding my breath. Is that clear!"

"How long have they been at this?" Sáclair said out loud, looking at the smaller softer looking xenos nervously standing between Galut and Danzig. The xenos squealed and flinched as Sáclair started to drunkenly move his limbs about.

"A good thirty minutes I'd guess sir," Danzig smiled, "What do you think Mr. Cotto?"

The disheveled Cotto nodded and spoke through his translation computer, "A good thirty minutes… Mrs… nice… corpse lady." The xenos winced as the words fell lamely from his lips.

Sáclair adjusted the sheer sheet covering the puppet's frame for modesty's sake, noting idly that the body was female. He stood and cracked his neck, "Captain Nathaniel Emmanuelle Sáclair at your service."

The officious man with the feathery crest of hair blinked blandly and quirked an eyebrow, "You are significantly less dead than you were when you were carried into my quarters. Exactly how did you achieve that madam?"

"Mister actually. This form," he ran his hands down his body, "is simply a puppet, a servitor to serve as my shape during these negotiations. My actual body is substantially more dashing… and substantially more male."

"Of course it is," Sáclair couldn't tell which was more scornful, the native speech dripping with sarcasm or the deadpan delivery of the translator. He rounded on the Inquisitor, "Are there any other surprises you feel compelled to deliver to me Ambassador Hilder?"

"I have no doubt there are Ambassador Mollari," The Inquisitor stared at Sáclair's avatar pointedly, "but hopefully not today."

"Really Inquisitor I must ask why you did not simply wait to bring me in till our scheduled time rather than having the added confusion?" Sáclair shook his head in mild consternation. If this was some political strategy on the part of the Inquisitor to gain influence on the _Endless Bounty_ it was hardly the time for it.

Unexpectely it was Navigator Calven who came to the Inquisitor's defense, "Honored Captain you are an hour late. We would have kept the avatar concealed longer but we were unsure if it had ceased functioning."

"An hour?" Sáclair blinked sluggishly as he examined the delicate hands of the Avatar, "I experienced some resistance in reaching the station but I assumed it had been over a matter of minutes not a matter of hours."

The Inquisitor's voice darkened, "It would seem our psychic intruder from the landing bay has been up to more mischief. It appears that we need to take additional precautions."

"Bah," exclaimed the Ambassador, "Psychics, hang the lot of them and let the maker sort them out," he shook a sausage-like finger, "You mark my word, a psychic left to his own devices can only lead to bad things." The Imperials laughed politely and the portly xenos seemed to relax somewhat, though Sáclair noticed Mollari's eyes lingered on the chest and hips of the avatar. He would have to remember that in future, he could use it.

The Ambassador clapped his hands together and the portly, shorter xenos waddled out with a tray of some aromatic green liquor. He nervously approached each of the Imperials in turn offering the liquor and they each in turn politely turned the offer down with the exception of the Inquisitor and, surprisingly, the Skitarii. The Inquisitor had to accept the drink for politeness sake but Sáclair couldn't fathom why the Skitarii had accepted the drink. Not to be outdone, as the tray reached Sáclair's avatar he snatched a glass of the steaming liquid with delicate fingers.

"Ah good!" Chortled the Ambassador, "I was beginning to think your species was a bunch of insufferable teetotalers. A toast then! To the meeting of our worlds." He raised his glass then drank the entire contents of it. The Imperials each raised their glasses and downed their own. Sáclair repeated in kind, knowing full well alcohol would have no effect on the avatar. The Inquisitor tipped the contents of his glass into the space between the skull mask's teeth, no doubt into some secret catheter or pouch specifically for this purpose. The Skitharii sipped with gusto from his drink with a proboscis like mechandrite.

The Inquisitor interjected, "While I do enjoy pleasantries we do have pressing business to deal with Ambassador. I hate to break with such lovely revelry but we truly must get to business."

Sáclair chortled, "Business, business, business, it's always business with you Hildy," the leaned towards Ambassador Mollari and said in a false whisper, "Unfortunately he is correct though. We do need to get to business."

The Inquisitor snapped his fingers and the fidgety autosavant approached with a long scroll written in the simplistic script of Interlac. The Ambassador took the proffered list and eyed in with forced mild disinterest then his eyes widened, "You have of course double checked this figure on how much water you want. It's double what Babylon 5 makes use of in monthly operations."

"The figure is correct," Sáclair said firmly.

"Great maker… you must be dying of thirst!"

"Not as of yet," the Inquisitor said in a tone of measured indifference nearly as flat as the translation out of the small computer on the table.

"None of these demands seem unreasonable. Getting this much potable water here on your timeline will be difficult and expensive but not impossible," he waved over to his attendant who walked over with a data tablet, "The grain and… what is a grox?"

"A quadruped commonly consumed for its meat," the Inquisitor stated dryly, "We'll settle for any low maintenance large edible quadruped."

"Yes, the sale of grain and foodstuffs must go through proper medical quarantine procedures first. We'll need to make sure it doesn't damage your first. If you'll provide us with medical records we can…" The Ambassador cut off as the Inquisitor raised his hand palm facing outwards.

"If that is the case then we request samples of the grain and animals in question. We are fully capable of testing them ourselves," Sáclair nodded. He was in no rush to provide xenos with biological profiles of humans.

"If you insist," the Ambassador fidgeted with the data tablet, "The water will be here within two days, you have my word on that. As to the matter of payment," Sáclair stiffened, "It has been covered by a third party already."

Sáclair blinked nonplussed and stared at the blank mask of the Inquisitor, "Paid? Paid for by whom?" The Inquisitor shook his head a fraction of a centimeter, he had no idea who their donor was either.

"They have stated their wish to stay anonymous," the Ambassador nursed a fresh drink, "However they appear to have a common professional interest in your goals in this sector and in keeping you independent from local entanglements. It is a wise suggestion, I would obey it if I were you."

"Is that a threat Ambassador Mollari?" The Inquisitor rubbed his fingers together, small flickers of psychic energy sparked in his palm.

The Ambassador chuckled, "I have no need to threaten you. You will find out quickly enough that the universe is dangerous enough for all of us without the need to manufacture enemies where there are none. Take the water, the food, and the advice. Freedom is a gift. Do not squander it."

* * *

The council would listen. They had to listen. They had to listen or all would be lost. G'kar had spend his entire life working for one cause or another. When he'd been younger it had been helping form the Narn government, which had led to politics, which had led to his position on Babylon 5. Now he once again found himself on the precipice of great strife. There was wisdom an clarity in that.

G'Kar had always been a man of clear head and clear thought. He found purpose in right action and planning for the worst. It had served him well in the past and now might very well serve all the races of the galaxy. The teachings G'Quan state that the universe brings each of us to pivotal moments in time in which we shape the face of things to come. G'Kar believed meeting of the council was one such moment. Yet even as G'Kar spoke of his travels and the dark danger he'd uncovered he felt the cool indifference of disbelief from the other members, "I believe that the ancient race described in our holy books may have returned. If true this holds grave danger for all of us."

"You say the dead worlds previously controlled by this force are inhabited again," the new Captain waved his hand, "Maybe they've been colonized by someone else? The Imperials perhaps?"

"No it's them I'm sure of it. The configuration of the ships that fired on us was too similar to the drawings made by G'Quan," G'Kar shook his head, "The imperial ships are nothing like those that fired on mine."

"Then why have we heard nothing official from the Narn home world confirming your opinion," G'Kar winced. The Human's comment was entirely reasonable but not productive to G'Kar's goals.

"My government has certain reservations." G'Kar hedged.

"Then we're back where we started. We need proof." The human was insufferably narrow-minded. Sinclair would have perhaps been more agreeable to taking G'Kar's word on faith.

"And I am prepared to give you that proof, despite the misgivings of a few in the inner circle of my government I have convinced them to send a ship to the heart of the enemy's old domain located at the rim of known space," G'kar shuddered at the memory, "A dark terrible place known as Za'ha'dum. It has been dead for a thousand years. No one goes there, no one."

Mollari stiffened considerably. He'd never expected the Centauri to be the one to simply sit back and listen to G'Kar without skepticisim. The Centauri had been positively respectful through the entire meeting. Apparently Mollari had taken their previous conversation to heart.

G'Kar continued, "Our ship will arrive in twelve hours coming out of hyperspace as close to enemy's home world as possible. They will scan the planet for signs of life and return to hyperspace before anyone can attack."

"And if someone is living there?" Sheridan still didn't seem to grasp the gravity of the situation. But how could he? He was an ignorant human, unaware of the teachings of G'Quan.

"Then all our races stand on the edge of extinction," The council members looked at him with varying levels of incredulity. The Vorlon was, as always, silent.

* * *

"Navigator if you ever have the unmitigated gall to interfere with an ongoing negotiation with a foreign government with something as insufferably petty as name calling I will cut off your arms," Daul's temper finally boiled over, "You are welcome to engage in whatever power plays and word games you wish in within the confines of the _Endless Bounty_ but I will not allow your ego to damage our safety in this region."

It had been some three hours since they'd started negotiating with the Drazi Ambassador for the right to pass through their territory. It could easily have been two if Daul hadn't been forced to talk up, down, over and around the Navigator's insufferable backtalk. He seemed not to have noticed yet that once you spoke through a translation computer the subtle nuances of the language were lost. Every word spoken was taken at face value as truth.

Daul narrowly missed tripping over one of Dorn's dragging whips as they walked along, flanked closely by the armored security officials. Daul had realized with some surprise that they seemed to be serving their stated purpose of guarding the Imperial envoy rather than spying on it. Their ambient thoughts were mostly indicative of curiosity rather than suspicion.

"I'm sure I haven't a clue what you're speaking of Inquisitor," the Navigator snidely droned in an unconvincing manner. Having a seven foot scaly beast threaten to tear your limbs off at feed them to your was generally accepted to be a memorable event.

"Then figure it out else keep your abnormally sharp tongue immobile. This is not the time or the place for us to match wits," Daul cracked his neck, "And I cannot always use my own talents to save you from your own foolishness."

Using psychic suggestion to convince the Ambassador had been risky. Races had gone to war for less.

"Inquisitor I assure you, you have never matched my wit." Calven swiped at the ruffled bit of his silk overcoat.

"Navigator," Sáclair's Avatar said in a voice of dangerous calm, "Propriety demands that we have a navigator as part of any diplomatic entourage. There is nothing stating that you need to be conscious. Don't tempt fate."

The navigator bristled at the insult but stayed blissfully silent for the next thirty minutes. Daul knew he would pay for it later but enjoyed the brief respite from the navigator's sanctimony.

* * *

Mr. Morden entered Londo's quarters with his usual calm and swagger, "You wanted to see me ambassador?"

"You said I should tell you if I heard about anything unusual happening out on the rim," Londo eyed his face with interest, "the Narns have sent a military ship to investigate a world called Za'ha'dum."

Morden stiffened, near imperceptivity, but he did stiffen.

"Ah," Londo's face cracked into a smile, "I see you know it."

"Only in passing," Mr. Morden's face was a blank mask of serenity, "Do you by any chance know when it's scheduled to arrive?'

"Yes, in a little under ten hours," Londo didn't know why he told Mr. Morden what he asked for. It wasn't that he felt he owed Mr. Morden anything. He simply feared that his involvement with Mr. Morden might be discovered.

"An what of the other matter? The Imperials?" His face betrayed some excitement at the word 'Imperials.'

"They have requested large qualities of grain and water," Londo paused, "Not large, massive, monumental, insane quantities of grain and water."

"My associates might be interested in financing part of that," Mr Morden started.

"I'm sorry Mr. Morden but the cost has already been met," Londo tried to keep his face straight, "They are a proud people and were unwilling to put themselves in the debt of anyone else. They actually negotiated the price up so that it would better reflect the value being offered."

"Interesting," Mr. Morden smiled the grin that didn't reach his eyes and bowed slightly, "Well I must take my leave of you Ambassador. I hope you forgive me." Then he left without waiting for so much as a goodbye.

As the door shut his attendant Vir asked, "Sir, why did you lie to him? You paid the cost of getting the water and grain here, at substantial cost to your diplomatic accounts I might add. What is served by pretending that the Imperials are unwilling to receive gifts."

Londo nodded, "Vir, I am old. I am too old to change my ways but I am not so old as to have gone foolish." He walked over to the bar and poured himself a drink, "The Imperials must be truly at the edge of their wits to request that much water at once. I don't even want to begin to imagine the sort of rationing they're doing. Mr. Morden relies upon the desires of those in need. I simply removed some of that need."

"But we know nothing of these Imperials sir! What we do know is troubling."

"Better to have them as an ally then isn't it?" Londo sighed, "In truth Vir I do not know why I did it. It seemed to be the right thing to offer them the water just as now it seems wise to distance myself from them to Mr. Morden. It is perhaps best not to think about it too hard," he downed his drink, "I won't."

* * *

Talia Winters strode down the hallway with Lou Welch, trying to ignore the stray thoughts she way catching from the security guard. Lou wasn't stupid by any measure, but nobody had ever accused the man of being overtly complex. The man wore his heart on his sleeve and his thoughts could easily be heard out loud even if you weren't a psychic. A dull hum of worry about the security chief and stray thoughts about women they passed in the hallway buzzed in the back of her mind.

Talia liked Lou, there was no insincerity too him, she just wished fewer of his stray thoughts about women had to do with her. She rolled her eyes as the doors to the med bay opened and another stray thought of Lou's ran through her head. Well, at least that one was mildly romantic.

Lou walked into the med bay, bent over one of the sleeping figures and gently shook Garibaldi, "Chief, I brought her like you asked,"

Garibaldi looked up, "Hey Lou, good work," he looked at Talia, "He tell you?" Garibaldi's mind always projected a subtle edge of planning into a room. It was a bit like standing next to a chess match, you never quite got a read on his surface thoughts but he gave you the impression he'd already planned out checkmate.

Unfortunately the side effect of being so good at planning ahead was that he sometimes lost track of the here and now, "Yes, Mr. Garibaldi you have to understand that even if I do go into your mind, even if I do find anything, it's not admissible in court."

Garibaldi shook his head, "I know," Talia felt a jolt of his desperation, "Look I've gotta find out who did this to me. If there's anything in my memory, anything I missed or forgot you can find it."

"You may be placing too much faith in my abilities," Talia said nervously as she realized how conflicted Garibaldi was feeling, "But I'll try."

She removed her gloves, "In this condition this will have to be a deep scan." She smiled politely, "It may cause you some discomfort." There was no "may" about it. It was going to hurt like hell but there was no reason to get him more worked up than he already was.

Garibaldi grabbed her hand without a second thought, "Let's do it."

Talia felt the jolt of being in his mind. It was an odd sensation being in someone else's memories. She didn't simply view the memories, she became part of them for a short while. She felt the cold air of down below, the slight twinge from a cut on Michael's hand and a sight pang of hunger from having missed lunch.

But above all she felt the rush of adrenaline that Garibaldi felt as he apprehended three ner-do-well thugs in brown sector. They were the sort of thug for hire that thrived in brown sector, all muscle and no neck. A squinty eyed man with a slight slur spoke to Michael fearlessly, "I told you, not to poke around in things that are too big for you."

"Yeah well it's a litter late for that," Talia felt Michel's surge of amusement at his own wit. The man way all together too satisfied with his own sense of humor, "Now up against the wall"

"I think not," The man smiled and looked past Michael.

The memory started to freeze and skip for a moment, Michael's memory was approaching the point where he blacked out. Talia felt fear, exhalation, and confusion as the whine of a plasma pistol firing sounded in the small corridor and Michael's world exploded into pain.

The memory skipped and restarted as Michel's mind tried with all it's might to force itself away from that moment of pain. Not just the pain… the betrayal.

Why betrayal? The face, a face, there was a familiar face in the mirror. A face holding a gun, a known face, a trusted face, it was a friend's face.

Talia let got of Mr. Garibaldi's hand in horror when she realized who's face she was looking at, "No! Oh god no…" She gently massaged her hand.

Lou grabbed her shoulders and tried to comfort her, "What? What'd you see?"

Talia tried to say but simply stood in horror as Mr. Garibaldi seethed in rage, his every revenge fantasy playing through her mind.

Checkmate.

* * *

Jack looked through yet another stack of requisition forms wondering idly how Garibaldi managed to get all this paperwork done and micromanage as much of the station security operations as he did. There had to be some secret to it but for the life of him he couldn't figure out what it was. By all accounts Garibaldi had to be employing elves or something to do it for him otherwise he had given up sleep altogether.

Chen Park rushed into the room breaking Jack's train of thought, "Hey, come you gotta see this!"

"What is it? I'm kind of busy here," Jack tired to remember what word he'd been intending to write next. Theft of goods perhaps? Damn.

"Ambassador Delenn is out of that weird cocoon and she's got wings just like a butterfly," he flapped his arms exaggeratedly, "You gotta come see."

Jack rolled his eyes and followed into corridor. Delenn had better not have sprouted wings or he owed Mike Turner fifty credits. As he wondered if he'd be able to Welch his way out of paying the bet he felt a powerful pair of hands grab him and toss him to the wall. Before he knew it a fist had clipped him in the face and he was sitting in a half dazed heap with a plasma rifle inches from his mouth.

Jack looked up to see half the security staff of the ship in full body armor pointing PPGs in his face. He smiled shaking his head, Garibaldi had told him that this was the right of initiation for a new security chief but he'd never actually believed it. Lou hadn't needed to hit him quite so hard for the joke but Lou wasn't the most subtle man on the planet.

Lou sneered and yelled, "Go ahead, go for it, make my fragging solar year." As he plasma rifle whined with a round.

Jack flinched. This was no joke, Lou was not that good of an actor and wasn't about to have a live round on anyone he didn't actually intend to shoot. Garibaldi had instilled that in them all very early on. As Lou's foot connected with his kidney Jack coughed up phleghm and realized what was happening.

Garibaldi's memory must have returned. Damn, and double damn, he should have just shot him twice to be sure in Brown sector.

"That's enough," Sheridan walked down the corridor and eyed Jack with disdain.

"He's all your's sir," Lou growled looking down at Jack with murder in his eyes, "Unless you want to walk around the block a few times and leave him to us."

"I appreciate your enthusiasm but I don't think that'll be necessary." Sheridan said in a pleasantly brusque tone, "Put him in lockup under maximum security I want check ups every quarter hour."

"Yes sir," Jack winced in pain as Lou yanked him up and tossed him to two other security officers. Jack noticed they never took their fingers off the trigger of their guns. An accident still seemed entirely likely, "Take him."

As they dragged him away Jack resisted the urge to smile. They should have just shot him when they had the chance.

* * *

As Daul sat on one of the sofas in the apartment granted to the Imperial diplomatic envoy he reflected on his day. Meeting the diplomats had been simple, almost pleasant even.

In the space of a day they'd met the Centauri, Drazi, Abbai and Vree representatives. Wholly inexperienced with the foreign policy of the Empire the various races with Embassies on Babylon 5 had been all too willing to provide maps and star charts with the hope of procuring trade in future. Their openness about providing details of their spatial geography was jarring really, they acquired so much information that Navigator Calven insisted upon returning to the _Endless Bounty_ so that it could be analyzed.

So eager was Daul to rid himself of the insufferable nuisance of a Navigator it was not till the shuttle had lifted off carrying Calven, Fadir, and Hamman that Daul realized he had no exit strategy if relations on the Babylon station soured. After all the danger and fear of the past week the openness and apparent friendship of the Babylon station had tricked him into letting his guard down. He tried not to think of what his mentor Inquistior Gaal would have had to say about something as foolish as letting a questionable ally leave with the only escape craft.

The Sáclair's avatar stood at the bar fixing another drink for itself. Hamman shook his head and turned to him, "Captian what point is there in wasting alcohol on an astropathic avatar?"

"Inquisitor at some point you will realize that there is an art to hospitality," he lifted the glass of the blue liquid, "When you are offered drink, you drink. The Vree honored me by offering me a strong spirit, thus I must drink it."

Gazan smiled as he looked at the poison swoop in his hands, "And the fact that you can drink what is effectively promethium at no risk to your own liver is only part of it sir? I think Hamman uses less potent materials in his flamer."

Daul chuckled dryly, "Unless I miss my mark what they said is 'may your ship drink this.' I'm reasonably certain that is a fuel additive."

"Is it now?" the avatar wiped it's lips, "We'll I'd best disconnect from the avatar before it eats through the synthetics lining the stomach and starts to cause the avatar pain. Cheers Hildy." The avatar placed it's glass on the counter and fell boneless in a heap on the floor. Cairn, chattering angrily in binary lifted the body and carried it back to the bed. Daul recognized that tone, it was the same tone he was subjected to when he broke an auspex.

Vira'Capac growled and stirred from his place on the floor with his mastiffs, "Something comes. Old, I do not like it." The dogs snapped their jaws, "Neither do my hounds."

"Helmets ON!" Daul ordered as he scrambled to replace his own. There was something to be said for intimidation.

The door chimed and the Lionhearts hopped to attention on either side of it. Daul nodded to Danzig and he pressed the button to permit entry. A tall man in a tailored suit sauntered in smiling at Daul as though he weren't surrounded. He cocked his head and started to speak in gothic, "Good day Inquisitor. Lovely weather we've been having lately isn't it."

Daul blinked nonplussed and walked over to the grinning man, "You speak high gothic?"

"I am Mr. Morden. My associate's understanding of language far supercedes that of those on Babylon five. Suffice it to say they find you to be," he tapped his fingers together searching for the right word, "…interesting. And thus they provided me with the necessary… equipment to fulfill the role of communicating with you."

"And just who might these linguistically savvy associates be?" Daul crossed his arms. The temptation to simply allow Galut to pound the arrogant man to paste was ample.

"Now, now," The man smiled, "Start small. I've come to ask you a question… a riddle really. They want to see if you know the answer to it."

"Indeed?" Daul said impassively. A few pregnant moments of silence passed as Mr. Morden stood smiling. Daul raised his palm to his forehead as he realized what Mr. Moren was waiting for, "Mr. Morden what is your question?"

The man grinned, "What do you want?"

"What are the policy goals of my government?" Daul asked politely. It wasn't a spectacularly unexpected question, and was admittedly one he'd hedged around for most of the day.

"No," Mr. Morden shook his head, "You personally. What do you want?"

"Mr. Morden," Daul's annoyance seeped into his voice, "I hope you are not deliberately wasting my time."

"It's a simple question Inquisitor," The man continued, "What do you want."

"I want all the gold in the universe," Daul waved to the open door, "Now leave."

"What do you want?" the man was unabashed.

"I want you to leave." Daul waved to his retinue, all of whom started cracking their knuckles and glaring.

"What do you want?" The man wholly ignored even the ogryn and the yapping mastiffs.

Before he knew it Daul was screaming. He hadn't intended to say it but for some reason it boiled out of him, "I want to find and kill Soren Faust. I want to torture him for an age and a day then kill him so slowly the dark pits of hell will seem like a glorious holiday by comparison. I want to find all his works and render them to ash and erase him from history and memory."

The man grinned widely, "And then?"

Daul glowered, ashamed that he'd admitted as much as he had, "And then if you do not leave this room in ten seconds I will flay the skin from your bones and allow Vira'Capac to consume your entrails." His face left no room for doubt that he meant what he said.

The man bowed and politely excused himself from the room, smiling broadly, "I'll see you soon Inquisitor."

Daul stared the man in the eyes and realized idly that he would most likely have to kill that man before the year ended. He doubted he would regret the action.

* * *

Michael hobbled around the interrogation room, staring at Jack with irate fury. It had taken a massive amount of effort to get the doctor to agree to dope him up enough that he could stare his shooter in the face. Now that he was here he only felt cold burning disappointment, "I trusted you. I taught you everything I knew. I gave you every break," he growled, "I even treated you like my own brother."

Jack looked to the wall in front of him, pretending not to even notice Michael. Micheal slammed his cane on table. Jack flinched but said nothing.

"My god why did you do it?" Michael felt a desperation seep into in his voice. It made no sense, why would Jack do this? Even consider this?

"I had my instructions," Jack said with cool confidence.

"From who?" Michael said with as much venom as he could manage.

"There's a new order coming back home Garibaldi. You can either be part of it or you can be stepped on.. be a winner or loser," Jack said with cult-like conviction, "I'm with the side that's going to win."

"Home Guard?" It wouldn't be beyond their agenda to do so. They'd caused numerous smaller incidents back on earth.

"Home Guard," Jack chuckled, "They're a bunch of misfits." He squinted at Michael in surprise, "You really don't have a clue do you Garibaldi."

Michael was in no mood to be condescended to by his shooter, "Look if I were you I'd start talking straight because right now you're in a whole world of trouble."

"You don't even know what trouble is," Jack smiled brightly, "but you're going to find out real soon."

"Yeah well, while I'm worrying about that," Michael leaned in close to Jack's ear, "roll this one around in your head. Shooting a senior officer is an act of treason and mutiny. The penalty is spacing. They put you in an airlock, seal it, and open the space door. You spend the next five minutes chewing vacuum until your lungs turn inside out, your eyeballs freeze and your heart explodes. It's the worst kind of death you can imagine."

Jack's face tightened and Michael continued, "And when that day comes, I'll be there to push the button."

Garibaldi walked to exit with a heavy heart and his blood boiling.

"Hey Garibaldi," Jack saluted Michael's turned back, "Be seeing you."

* * *

John sat in his office doing paperwork. It was a fantastic excuse to brood in private rather than have another of the insufferably personal conversations that Liz seemed determined to foist on him. He finished reading another report on the state of station hydroponics and felt his head throb. The throbbing turned into a shooting pain as the monitor rang.

He pressed the activator and the face of Lieutenant Commander Susan Ivanova appeared on the monitor, "Captain."

"I know. I know. The council meeting. I'm just trying to finish up a few things here before I go." John picked up the hydroponics report and tossed it in a drawer. It didn't help his headache but it did give a strange sense of satisfaction.

"It's the President. He's on Gold Channel One. He wants to speak with you," Ivanova smiled knowingly "Unless you'd like to have me tell him to call back later?"

"Ivanova," John sighed in exasperation. One did not tell the President to call back later, especially not one of his military officers.

"Yes sir," she smiled "Stand by."

Sheridan stood and moved over to main viewer behind his desk. He thought idly that he really ought to have worn his formal uniform today rather than his standard one as the Balding and sour face of President Clarkeappeared on screen. Rumor had it that the new President had an obsession with proper appearance.

"Mr. President, to what do I owe the honor of this call?"

"Captain Sheridan I've just read the report on your recent arrest," the President's voice filled with shock, "Do you really think this individual was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate my predecessor?"

"It's a little early for that sir. All we have on him now is attempted murder of the senior officer who discovered the alleged conspiracy." Sheridan wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be true, but he was still hoping it was simply an unfortunate co-incidence.

"I see," President Clarkenodded, "This is very serious captain if there's the slightest chance this might be true we need to investigate fully."

"Oh I agree sir."

"Good," the president clapped his hands "I want him put on the first prison ship to Earth."

"I'm not sure I understand sir," it would potentially break the chain of evidence to have the investigation run from Earthdome. They still needed to interrogate Jack further.

"We can't risk this being mishandled Captain. During the time I as Vice President under Santiago I grew to admire and appreciate the man. I owe it to his memory to personally oversee any inquiry," Clarkeleft no room for debate in his voice. It was an order, simply not stated as such, "The first shuttle out Captain."

"And I want all transcripts, vid, and background materials sent with him. I need to have everything right at my fingertips." Sheridan felt the same feeling of confusion again but this was doubtless going to be a highly political trial. It wouldn't do to lose on a technicality he supposed.

"Yes sir," he hesitated slightly, "Of course sir."

"You're a good man Sheridan," the President smiled brightly.

"Thank you," Sheridan beamed at the compliment.

"Good work on this," the President said with gusto, "To you and your chief of security. I'll keep you informed of anything we find. Earth dome out."

Sheridan stood in confusion for a few minutes before heading out of his office. The council was waiting. The whole situation was astoundingly strange.

* * *

Magos Frist flinched at the severe tone of the Chief Docere Medicus, "I do not even begin to understand why you are in my surgery and making use of my equipment but if you do not put that regent pack back into the cupboard ask me for it first I will remove the hand that is holding it with a bonesaw."

Kerrigan turned to Docere Nor as the diminutive surgeon stood there in his white scrubs and apron with his arms crossed tapping his foot, "My apologies Docere but there are some necessary tests I need to do…"

"They'd better be damn necessary for you to try and sneak a level two contained substance out of my supply cabinets without my knowledge," He pointed to the numberous servo-skulls flitting about the room, "You do realize the servo-skulls are programmed to inform me or the nearest doctor the second that anyone tries to remove anything from the medical supplies without going through proper channels? You're lucky you didn't set off the damn gun turrets."

"Not lucky per se," Kerrigan smiled as she put the regent pack down, but not quite away, "I disabled the defense turrets."

"Damn it woman! We use those to discourage the theft of opiates," Nor waved his scalpel around in the air to emphasize his point, the silver tip flashed in the bright sterile light of the surgery.

"I indented to activate them after I left," Kerrigan bristled, "But it really was urgent to test this sample." Kerrigan pulled out the vial from her robes full of the nutrient liquid from Dorn's chambers, "I believe there might be an exotic toxin in it."

"Oh for the love of…." The Docere strode forwards and snatched the vial out of Kerrigan's hand, "Testing this with a level two pack is only going to tell you how to treat a human being and if one of the things it can treat is in it. None of those things are "exotic" in the slightest." He stared at the vial, "If you want it tested proper I can do it but it might take a matter of some days."

Kerrigan smiled. It was not the ideal solution but it seemed unlikely she would get a better offer, "You realize I will require some discretion in this of course? And one of my attendants will be with the sample to observe the procedure."

"Of course," Nor nodded, "Just stay out of my damn surgery. Half my patients are so doped up they were screaming they saw a daemon when you walked by. I've got enough to get on with without psychotic breakdowns."

* * *

"I'm afraid to say that the ship dispatched to investigate Za'ha'dum has been destroyed. They're reporting it as an accident with the jump engines. It happened just as they left hyperspace. The Ka'ri says it cannot afford to send another ship for some time." Na'toth's news was like a dagger in G'Kar's heart. The assembled council stared at him expectantly.

He had no proof, damn.

"No I won't accept this," He slapped his hand against the table, "This cannot have been an accident. When a warship jumps to normal space it's briefly out of contact because of the energy drain. It might have been attacked during that period."

"But that couldn't happen unless," a dangerous thought flitted into his mind, "unless they knew the ship was coming and were waiting for it. But no one knew except," trailed off and looked at the council members in horror.

"What exactly are you implying Ambassador?" Sheridan growled.

G'Kar moaned dejectedly, "Nothing. I'm too late. Everything is too late." His purpose, his goal, all was lost. They would come and the worlds would no be ready.

His dark thoughts were broken as the Minbari Mr. Lennier walked in proudly, "If I may address the council."

"Yes Mr. Lennier?" Sheridan smiled politely. Human friendliness involved altogether too much baring of teeth. It was difficult to tell rage from joy.

"Ambassador Delenn has been unavailable of late," Ambassador Mollari snorted at the understatement, "She has now returned and wishes to know if she may take back her seat on the council."

"Well yes, of course. Have her come in," the human said in his usual gung-ho boorish voice, "I've been looking forward to meeting her."

Lennier bowed and exited. In his wake a white robed figure entered the room, Delenn. She lowered her head and revealed something altogether not Minbari. G'Kar's jaw dropped in astonishment. The face and bone ridge had changed significantly, softening and subduing the angular features of the Minbari. Her crest of bone had bisected and now covered a generous mane of soft brown hair that reached down to her shoulders.

She was beautiful.

She spoke in the familiar comforting tone G'Kar remembered, "Ambassador Sinclair has been allowed to live on my world as an act of good faith to create a greater understanding between Minbari and humans. In return I have undergone this change with the blessings of my government so that I might become a bridge between our worlds in the hope that we will never know war between us again."

Perhaps not all was lost yet after all.

* * *

It was some hours later that John was back in his quarters with his sister, still reeling at the events of the council meeting, "All I could do was sit there my jaw on the floor looking at her"

"I can't say as I blame you," Liz smiled, "Has her genetic structure changed as well or just her outward appearance."

"I don't know but she didn't seem to inclined to talk about it," John smiled brightly "God what a day, the Imperials, Garibaldi, the President, the Imperials, and now this?"

"And it's not quite over yet," Liz said morosely, "When I decided to come see you I brought something with me. I've been debating over if I ought to show it to you or not but after our talk the other night… and you blaming yourself for Anna taking that job on the Icarus, I think it's something you ought to see."

She pulled a video crystal out of her purse, "Its part of a message sent to me about a week before she left on the Icarus." John took the crystal and stared at it in numb shock "I'll be in my quarters if you want to talk."

She rose and left the room. After a moment John walked over to computers and put in the crystal, "Play."

Ann appeared on screen just as beautiful as he remembered her, "Ah well maybe we'll have the chance to try again later. I am really excited about signing up for the Icarus next week. John and I were supposed to spend some time together but Dr. Chang thinks he's found the ruins to an ancient civilization nobody's ever heard of before and the chance to be there when the discovery is confirmed is just too good of an opportunity to pass up. I had already decided to put off our vacation when John called and told me that he had to cancel so it worked out just great."

She laughed and John felt knives in his heart, "Though the poor dear looked so put out about canceling I wanted to tell him that I was going away anyway but we had so much else to cover and there's never enough time. I'll just have to fill him in when I get back."

"You've got quite a brother there Liz. I can't tell you how lucky I feel sometimes. When he's not here I just… someone said that love knows no borders and ours certainly tests the meaning. I'll check in with you when I get back but with any luck you'll hear about it on the news first. My love to Danny and the kids. Bye!"

John reached a shaking hand to the screen said, "Goodbye. I love you Anna," and broke down crying for the first time in years.

* * *

"I want to thank you for helping out," Michael turned to Talia and Susan as they entered the med-bay.

"Don't worry but it's still not admissible in court." Talia waved her gloved hand knowingly.

"Nah, now that you've got the ol' memory going I'll be able to find and, uh, speaking of taking it from here," Michael nodded to Susan, "Can I have a minute?"

"Oh! Sure, I'll see you later." Talia politely let herself out.

Susan raised an eyebrow, "Is something the matter?"

"No," Michael said unconvincingly, "I just didn't want her to hear this. I trust her… well I trust her as much as I trust any telepath but she's still Psi-core."

"What does Psi-core have to do with this?" Susan blinked.

"I've been thinking about this little salute Jack gave me back in his cell, it's the same as that Psycop Bester gave," He imitated the salute, "Its like he was rubbing my nose in something he knew I could never prove. Remember there was a big scandal about the core endorsing Vice-President Clark?"

"Sure it was big news, made all the nets," Susan shook her head in disgust, "Their charter prohibits them from recommending candidates to their members."

"Exactly," Michael waved his finger in the air, "Now Jack didn't admit anything but he did say the home guard wasn't behind President Santiago's assassination. What if it was the Psi-core? What if they wanted someone in office who was sympathetic to the core? Right before Earthforce One exploded the Vice President got off at Mars saying he had the flu. It's pretty convenient wouldn't you say?"

* * *

The Inquisitor pulled the servo skull out of it's case and passed it to Gazan. It felt cold in his hands. He pursed his lips and looked at the Inquisitor, "Sir?"

"The probes on the skull ought to have collected some hair and skin cells covertly. I want the samples tested against known biological profiles for species in known space," he pointed to the skitarii, "Cairn is more than capable of doing the analysis but he won't be able to tell me what the results are in plain speech."

"Which is where we come in," Gazan said looking at Jak.

"Which is where you come in," Daul nodded, "I'm going to get some sleep. I've been awake for close to seventy-two hours now. Wake me the second you finish the analysis."

Gazan nodded as the Inquisitor walked away. It was jarring to think of the Inquisitor doing something as normal as eating or sleeping. He'd certainly never done either in view of any of the Lionhearts. There were some bizarre rumors that the Inquisitor required neither and simply survived by consuming the souls of heretics.

Danzig wandered over as the Skitarii set up some unrecognizable scanning equipment and shoved the servo-skulls sample tray unto it. The Lieutenant eyed the Skitarii and muttered, "Gazan do you have the remotest clue what he's doing?"

"I suspect that he's scanning it with a sophisticated medical Auspex to determine the genetic profile of the species on station through a xeno-dna-cipher at level 1 clearance planning profile," Jak smiled at Danzig's uncomprehending look, "Yes Lieutentant I do have an understanding of it."

"Good," Danzig cracked his neck, "And it will let us know who we're dealing with?"

Gazan shrugged. It might let them know for some of the species but even the geno-archives of the bounty were limited. There were simply too many species in the galaxy to have records of all of them. Between the auto-savant and his medical logs from the Bounty it ought to more than suffice for identifying the known dangerous breeds, "More or less sir."

The Kroot giggled from its corner, "Can't even see what's staring you in the face can you. Can't taste it. Ignoring the hound to find the wolf."

"Shut it up will you Galut?" Danzig said to the massive ogryn.

The brute blinked confusedly, "Ez' just talkin'. Wot's the matter wid talkin'."

"Because he's saying naughty xenos things," giggled the kroot, "Vira'Capac speaks naughty xenos truths."

"If there's truth hidden in your rambling I've long since missed it," Jak snapped, "Now shut up and let us work."

* * *

It had taken John a long time to get himself composed enough not to burst into tears when he talked to Liz but eventually he soldiered on, put on a smile and helped her carry her bags to the departures section. It was sad to see her leave but he felt as though perhaps some of his regret might be getting on the shuttle and leaving with her.

Liz hugged John and beamed, "You'll write every once and a while to let me know how you are?"

"Yes, yes of course," John said as The intercom called out that Earth Cruiser Von Braun was announcing final boarding.

"That's my ship. Take care Johnny," they hugged again.

"You to huh? Thanks for coming, thanks for everything." John smiled brightly.

Liz swatted his shoulder and walked towards the boarding ramp, "You're my brother."

As John watched her round the corner and board the plane his link chimed, "Sheridan,"

"You're needed in CnC," it was Susan. John stared at the closing doors to the departure airlock and started to walk to blue sector command.

* * *

Na'Toth sat awkwardly in the garden next to G'Kar. He was insufferable when he got into one of his moods. It was best to simply sit back and indulge his introspection; he often came to useful conclusions eventually. She just wished they happened more quickly.

"Things have changed Na'Toth and they will never be the same, but we are Narns. We have learned to cope with change, to triumph in the face of adversity. We will overcome this as well."

G'Kar smiled amusedly and waved about a book, "We have no other choice."

Na'Toth pointed at the book in curiosity, "What is that?"

"A human book," G'Kar smiled and tapped the open page, "I've been studying their literature for a while and it seems that they may be wiser than we had assumed. Listen.

_Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;_

_Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,_

_The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere_

_The ceremony of innocence is drowned;_

_The best lack all conviction, while the worst_

_Are full of passionate intensity._

_And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,_

_Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?_

Na'Toth did not see the importance of it but G'Kar often saw deep meaning in things that disinterested her.

* * *

"So what's the problem?" John walked into the empty CnC. Only Susan was on shift as no ships were scheduled to arrive for another four hours.

"On a hunch I just checked on the ship taking the prisoner back to Earth," Susan frowned "He was transferred to another ship a half an hour later. It had Earthforce security markings, it knew all the right access and identification codes, had papers authorizing the transfer, but I just backtracked with Earth Central and the ID codes don't match any ship registered to Earthforce."

"Oh great!" John swore, "So he's gone and all the evidence with him?"

"I'm afraid so." Susan looked dejected.

"Have you notified President Clark?" John suspected the answer.

Susan shook her head, "He's not taking any calls."

John gritted his teeth and stared at the stars, "Gets cold up here sometimes Lieutenant Commander?"

"Yes sir," Susan nodded, "It does indeed."

* * *

Daul sank into the dream. It was not the nightmare he'd come to expect for decades but the comforting friendly space he'd always desired. He was in a garden, a beautiful garden full of flowers and trees. It was not the bramble filled garden of his family house on Metzik, or the stately order of the gardens at his own estate. It was more structured as though every inch of space had needed to be used.

His grandfather was standing in the middle of a vegetable patch with his goves off, pulling weeds from the sod. He paused his weeding to tug off a glove, pull out a handkerchief, stand up, and mop his brow, "You're late. I expected you days ago. I understand you're busy saving the universe and all but a body needs to sleep."

Daul wandered over to his grandfather and was elated to realize he was fully-grown. He stood a good quarter-meter taller than his grandfather. His grandfather quirked an eyebrow at Daul's expression, "Yes, yes. All boys have to grow up some day," he shoved a bulging basket of round red vegetables into Daul's arms, "Now you get to carry the basket."

Daul lost his balance slightly and had to struggle to keep from falling as the followed his grandfather. Bast Hilder pulled out his pipe and lit it as they wandered a winding path, "Come now boy keep up! We've got a lot of work to do yet."

"Where is this Opa?" Daul said as he stepped quickly to avoid stepping on some buzzing machine that was spraying water on the ground, "I don't recognize it."

"You do," Bast chuckled, "It's your mind after all." After a few minutes they reached a bench in the middle of a circle of flowers and Bast sat down, motioning for Daul to sit as well.

Daul sat and quickly put the basket down. Bast groaned, "Damn it boy! Don't bruise them. It takes too damn long to pick them to get more."

He held out his hand and grabbed one. It was read and juicy looking. When Bast cut a slice out of it, it made a soft squishy crunching sound before he popped it in his mouth, "Beautiful. Just perfectly ripe."

"What are those Opa?" Daul looked at them with interest.

"I don't rightly know," Bast looked up at him, "It's your dream after all. I just live here. Speaking of which you must have something you're dying to ask me else you would have taken one of those insufferable sleep potions you drink like candy."

"I just need to be up at a moment's notice Opa," Daul floundered. He really had been hoping to have the dream again but these new dreams scared him. He couldn't figure out what they meant, the nightmare at least he could categorize and understand. These visions were just too, odd.

"Boy I'm in your mind," Bast chewed another bit of the vegetable, "If you can't trust yourself around me you've gone completely around the bend." He tapped his brow, "Anyhow I know when you lie before you do child. Don't waste the effort."

Daul chuckled, "There's something familiar about this whole station. Ever since we got here I've been having premonitions about things. At first I thought it was just picking up stray thoughts and mistaking them for my own, but it's more than that. I know this place some how. I recognize were I am." Daul picked up one of the red vegetables and took a bite. The savory juice inside ran down his lip and he wiped it with the back of his hand, "I'd wager that were we're sitting right now is probably part of the station I've never been to."

Bast smiled widely, "Now you're using your head boy." He reached up and ruffled Daul's hair, "Now you're using your head."

"But it doesn't make any sense," Daul shuddered, "Why would I know anything about this place."

"Boy," Bast shook his head and puffed at his pipe, "You still aren't asking the right questions yet. You have to pick the right questions to get the right answer."

Bast stood up and dusted off his pant legs, "Now you're going have to wake up boy."

Daul looked up in shock as the garden started to fade, "But Opa!"

"Wake up boy," Bast's face faded out of view, "Wake up boy."

Daul opened his eyes and came face to face with Danzig. The Lionheart had Daul by the shoulder and was shaking him, "Sir you need to wake up! Wake up now!"

"I'm awake Lieutenant," Danzig blinked the stars out of his eyes, "What is so pressing?"

Gazan approached with a data-slate in trembling hands, his face perked upwards into a smile of stunned joy. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it and shook his head.

"Out with it already," Daul massaged his temples, "What is it?"

Vira'Capac laughed uproariously, "Your metal man and flesh-fixer have just discovered that the Babylonians aren't any known form of xeno-breed at all."

"That's hardly that shocking," Daul blinked, "There are billions of unknown and known non-human species that aren't in the data banks."

Vira'Capac crowed with laughter again, "Oh they have a record of the species alright, it just isn't on any of the 'non-human' lists."

Daul froze and looked at Gazan. Gazan swallowed and said, "Sir, of the forty sentients the servo skull sampled from exactly fifteen of them were one hundred percent pure blood human. Sir… the Babylonians… the Alliance… they're human."

"Throne of Terra almighty… where are we?" Daul's waking mind was wild with the possibilities.

* * *

A/N- My update schedule will be more irregular for the next couple months. I live in Japan and as I'm sure you know there are some rather... pressing matters that take precedent over writing fanfiction.

As always, reviews are appreciated.


	9. Chapter 9

The Sh'lassen Triumvirate had predicted a quick victory against the rebels. They were, after all, a disorganized group of religious fanatics. They were eternal optimists. They were hopeful. They were idiots.

Of course none of that changed the fact that the rebels were winning the war. It was hardly difficult to realize why.

The rebels held the fortress of Matok. It had been hewn from the undying stone during the last great invasion of the old war. The impregnable construction was completed in the time before words the honored nameless gods, ancient races of power and might beyond imagining.

The honored nameless gods, who the holy books name as intrinsically cleverer and more dangerous than the Sh'lassen could dream to be, designed the great walls and impossible geometries shielding Matok from the rage of the Ever-dying armies of the Bringer of Nightmares in the time before their banishment.

The eternal secrets of the honored nameless were hidden in Matok. The riddle of their disappearance entrusted only to the priest caste. The priests had hidden it from the Sh'lassen people in the height of their arrogance. Now the priests rebelled so that they might hide the secret of the nameless for eternity.

Matok was called the place of fire in the old days and in the old legends. It earned that name. Geysers of natural gasses filled the air. The smells of sulfur and methane seeped into the very flesh of those who walked through it. To wander the fields of Matok was to be stained for life with its taint and be haunted by the distant rumble of exploding clouds in the distance.

The Triumvirate couldn't begin to hope to mount an aerial assault or launch ballistic missiles at Matok. Any missile or aircraft flying through the skies of Martok simply exploded before reaching its indented target. Laser fire burned clouds but was refracted into nothingness before orbital bombardment could have any effect.

So they fought on the land, as their ancestors did, and theirs before them. The Triumvirate partisans huddled in deep trenches inching forwards step by laborious step. V'cath had spent the better part of the past year hunched and huddled in the steeping and sulfurous muck at the bottom of the trenches swatting the flies from his haunches and prying small stones from his hooves.

He hadn't yet even seen a rebel. Supposedly they filed their horns down to the nub but he couldn't imagine any man willingly cutting off his own horns. It's no wonder they started this insane war. How can a man with no horns be expected to think rationally?

He looked over the edge, squinting from the glare and from the smell. The heat haze from the deep geysers of methane and sulfur blurred his vision and made everything in the distance look the same shade of red. Another benefit of the landscape that crippled the attackers, Sh'lassen eyes saw heat not color. V'cath's normally acute sense of smell hadn't noticed anything other than the overpowering smell of rotting eggs since he'd spent his first night in the trenches.

The war leaders of his company assured him that his nose would eventually become accustomed to the ambient scents and adapt. They also promised him that he would only be fighting for two weeks rather than two years. The government promised soldiers many things.

He took a bite of his ration bar and wondered idly when they would create rations that don't all taste like they were chewed by at least three soldiers prior to reaching him. The bars, jokingly called "recycled food," consisted of a number of nutrient supplements bound to a protein and fiber combination base with roughly the consistency of sawdust and steel wool. It was best not to think too hard about where the protein in them came from if one wanted to keep them down.

After three weeks in the trenches without support V'cath would have gladly killed his own father for just a bite of decent food and clean water.

The hard earth above the trench reverberated with the sounds of hoof beats and V'cath grabbed his rifle tighter to his chest. A voice bleated exhaustedly and a shabby looking grey figure landed horns first in the trench.

V'cath relaxed. The familiar grey and black spotted fir and yellow sash indicated him at a Triumvirate partisan. He crawled over and helped the partisan up, "Come now, we can't have you going hooves up on me just yet."

The partisan spat out a glob of muck from his mouth and massaged an egg-sized lump on the bottom of his throat. Like most of the southern partisans he was a bit parrot mouthed and seemed to be suffering from a slight case of bottle jaw from the parasites that lived in the earth.

V'cath noticed the black bandanna wrapped around Matok's horns and snapped to attention. The man was one of the commanders of the foreword sorties, "Sorry sir. I did not realize who you were sir."

"At ease," the partisan commander pulled out a pair of field glasses and put them up to his face, looking to the sky. He muttered to himself in frustration, "Damn, damn, damn."

"Sir?" V'cath strained his eyes looking at the sky, "What's the matter?"

The commander furiously shoved the field glasses into V'cath's hands, "Look for yourself." V'cath nervously looked through the glasses. The ambient heat haze cleared out of his vision and he was left with a clear vision of a number of wide shapes falling through the sky towards the ground. Some damned fool must have ordered an air strike and gotten the wrong orbital coordinates.

He looked at V'cath, eyes roving over V'cath's scout rank insignia, "Do you have a mobile communications setup or is your unit relying on runners?"

"Runners sir," V'cath said nervously. There weren't enough mobile communications equipment powerful enough to transmit through the magnetic interference of the local terrain, "The next one should be here in ten minutes."

"Damn," The commander swore loudly, "We need to get those deactivated remotely. If the rebels go on high alert the assault I've been planning for the past three days will have to retreat." He spat on the ground, "Who would be so stupid? We haven't tired anything like that since the first days of the war."

"Sir," V'cath felt his blood running cold, "I think we should take cover, now."

"Are you giving me, orders whelp?" The commander snarled before V'cath grabbed him by the shoulders, shouted, "sooner would be better than later sir," and tossed him into the shallow cave at the back of the trench, crawling in soon after.

The skies turned to fire, blinding and malodorous. The battlefield suddenly became a roaring inferno of screaming and gunfire as the geysers lit aflame and forced entire squads to run into open ground. After a few minutes of fire the partisan commander popped his head out of the cave and motioned for V'cath to follow.

The two crawled out and looked over the rim of the trench. Not twenty yards away a trio of surviving rebels was on the open ground, pawing through the remains of several partisan soldiers who'd tried, and failed, to use the fire as a distraction to conceal their assault.

"I'll overlook breaking the chain of command this once," the partisan growled. Mud had caked in his mane and dribbled from his horns.

V'cath snorted, it wasn't worth the effort to argue with the partisan. He was longer in the horn than V'cath by at least ten summers and no doubt ten times as stubborn to boot. Luckily he had three perfectly good reasons to ignore the partisan in his sights.

V'cath shouldered his bulbous weapon and fired sort stream of phased plasma at the nearest of the three. He caught the rebel's shoulder, burning the flesh and tendons down to the bone. The rebel screamed and collapsed.

His fellow scavengers fell to the ground, shooting wildly and haphazardly. V'cath winced as a shot hit the earth in front of him, spraying his face with molten hot clay. He swatted the plasma-heated earth away from his face and resisted the urge to plunge his head into the pool of water at the bottom of the trench. It would provide a temporary comfort for his wound but more than likely go septic within hours.

The commander pulled a grenade out of a pouch on his bandolier and lobbed it towards in a high ark the prostrate rebels. They screamed and tried to run away but only managed to stand before it burst into a ball of flame, igniting a pocket of gas in the air and vaporizing them both. The commander yelled to V'cath, "Come on! We need to take the ground while we still can!"

V'cath nodded and left a red flag in the trench to let the runner know he'd advanced. The two of them hopped over the side and ran towards the next trench. As he hooves clipped over the packed earth V'cath prayed silently that there weren't any land mines in the thick orange clay.

Only ten meters to go.

The commander was leaping over stretches of uneven ground and corpses with a grace that V'cath lacked. V'cath felt his own hooves slipping and shifting on stones and nearly tripped over the tangled limbs of half a partisan.

Only five meters to go

The terrifying smell of rotten eggs filled his nose. There was a gas pocket forming nearby. It could be a small one that would only burn his fur or a large one that would leave a steaming pile of charnel, either way he didn't want to find out.

Three meters to go.

V'cath ran as fast as his meaty haunches would propel his goatish body forewords. The commander was ahead of him, already jumping face-first into the narrow trench. V'cath leapt into the air and way flung forewords but the concussive force of the blasting gas bubble as a huge shape impacted with the earth behind him.

He tumbled head over hooves beyond the trench and collapsed into a crater. His entire body throbbed with pain. He lay on his back breathing laboriously, not even trying to move.

A sound, a loud reverberating a metallic squelch echoed from where V'cath had been flung. The thudding of metal on clay followed it soon after, echoing an unnatural reverberating chorus of growling mewls. A dozen shambling feel rushed along the ground, chattering and arguing in some guttural speech he could not place.

A plasma shot's buzzing hiss cracked out and the commander yelled, "Stop where you are or we will open fire. I have ten men in this trench with me."

Another shot rang out, "I'm serious damn it."

Another shot, then another, and another, "Die! Damn you! Die!"

The commander screamed then went silent. V'cath shook in fear as the wet and unmistakable sounds of chewing echoed from the trench. The voices growled and hissed at each other with contempt as they chewed and swallowed luxuriously. An eternity later the great hulking sinewy men crawled over the edge of the trench and advanced towards the fortress of Matok. Their tentacles twitched angrily and the bursts of exploding gas lit up the spurs and crests of bone along their body terrifyingly. They each wore ragged scraps of armor bearing defiled images of what might have once been a two-headed bird of prey.

They walked only inches from his stunned body. He felt drips of blood drip off their talons and onto his charred fur. They dismissed his broken body and walked on, their hunger apparently sated for the moment.

It would be an hour till he got enough feeling back in his arms to drag himself back to the partisan camps or enough courage to risk being seen by the monsters. Time enough for him to sit and watch as some thousand capsules of the monsters impacted with the side of Matok.

Gods help them. The devils had returned for their ancestral home.

* * *

Michael hated the med bay. Dr. Franklin was nice enough, as good of a doctor as one could hope for, but the constant overpowering smell of antiseptics and sterile swabs was so thick he could taste it. It made him want to gag.

Why every doctor in the history of time had universally agreed that the doctor's office must be a good three to five degrees colder than anywhere else was a mystery. Garibaldi sat shirtless on the table as the doc waved a dermal regenerator over his spine. It whirred and spat loudly.

After a few moments the doc nodded and pulled out a stethoscope, "Breathe in please"

Michael breathed in, grimacing at the feel of the cold metal and freezing hands on his back. He exhaled as slowly as he could, counting backwards from three. If he had to go through another week of this he would go insane.

"Again slowly," Michael repeated the process, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. It burned a bit to move his chest that much but admitting it would get him another damned week of bed rest. Michel could have gladly never slept again.

"Does it hurt when I do that?" Dr. Franklin pressed down on a nerve cluster and throbbed badly.

"No" Michel lied, "No it's fine I don't feel a thing."

Dr. Franklin pressed down onto the nerve cluster and twisted. Michael jerked and yelled, "OW! Hey!"

"I don't like it when my patients lie to me." Dr. Franklin said in a tone of businesslike near calm. Michael recognized the tone, he used for interrogations. The Doc wasn't going to let him off easy this time. Damn, just his luck.

"Yeah well we could have discussed it. Geese what do you do when a patient's late? Stick needles in their eyes." The nerve cluster pounded with pain.

"I cannot fill out an honest physical evaluation without your co-operation," the doctor waved around the stylus to his pen like he was brandishing a sword, "You are being cranky and difficult."

"You try getting shot in the back sometime and see what it does for your disposition." Michael started putting back on his shirt. His shoulder burned from the effort of twisting it back into the sleeve, "Ugh, so how's it look?" Bad no doubt, it would be bad.

"Allowing for your tendency not to report everything that hurts, your condition seems to be improving right on schedule. I imagine you'll be able to get back to work in the next day or so," the way he said in a no-nonsense tone, "Providing you don't exert yourself."

"Yeah… well I gotta check in with the new Captain first. See if he even wants me around," Michael hedged, "Sides' I don't know about this guy. I keep thinking how everybody and his brother wanted Sinclair outta' here. Now all of a sudden this change of command." He chewed his lip, "Sinclair I could trust. This guy… I don't know."

Dr. Franklin quirked an eyebrow, "If you don't mind my saying so, you didn't exactly sound excited when I mentioned going back to work. I thought you'd be pleased."

"Yeah I am," Michael, said as much to convince himself as the doctor, "Mostly."

Michael tried to leave the med bay when a hand reached out and firmly grabbed him by the shoulder, "Hey Michael!" Michael turned to the concerned face of Dr. Franklin, "Want to talk about it?"

"Doc what do you want me to say," Michael sighed, "I got shot in the back by my own guy. My own second in command. He was right there all this time, a snake in the garden and I didn't even see it. What the hell kind of a security chief am I supposed to be, if I can't see something like that."

"You can't be expected to know everything."

"Yes I can. I coulda known and I shoulda known. And now I," Michael sighed piteously, "I just don't know if I'm cut out for any damn use to anybody any more." Michael would have liked nothing more than to just climb into a bottle and never crawl out. "You know I keep asking myself what qualifies me to take back my job and I haven't got an answer."

He walked to the door of the med bay and turned back to the Doctor, "I wish the hell I did." He walked out of the med bay with a clean bill of health and a loaded conscience.

* * *

The pilot sputtered in indignation, "You honestly expect me to make small talk with a blasted xenos sir?"

"What I expect you to do," Sáclair said in a slow and dangerous voice, "You officious, self-righteous, rebellious, little toad, is to fly to the Babylon station, shake hands with the captain of the Centauri ship, smile, laugh at his jokes, and then I expect you to get on with him as though you were the best of friends at least for the next hour." Sáclair towered over the pilot, "You seem to have forgotten with whom you are speaking. I am your liege lord. Do not mistake your place."

"If you feel the need to undergo ritual cleansing afterwards to purge yourself of the xenos influence then do so," Sáclair raised his finger and pointed it in the face of the freighter pilot, "But if you so much as show a frown before you've loaded every ounce of grain onto your ship I will have you made into a waste reclamation servitor."

Sáclair punctuated the conversation with the strongest glare he could manage. Between his memories and those of his predecessors he had a good three centuries worth of practice at intimidating looks, "Do I make myself clear."

"Sir!" the pilot swallowed nervously, "Transparently so sir."

"Good," Sáclair nodded, "Now do your damned job." The pilot, eager to be out of Sáclair's sight, rushed away tripping over his own boots as he went.

Sáclair was unwilling to allow xenos ships to berth on his longer than was absolutely necessary. After the first dozen or so tanker ships carrying water had arrived he'd insisted that all ships unload their cargo on Babylon 5 then load them onto Imperial freighters. It was a frustrating decision but politically necessary. Pilots without jobs are prone to mutiny. Loosening the alcohol rationing would have made them less mutinous but would have damaged the productivity of other crewmen.

He smiled and looked up at the half mended walls. The marble was cracked and several walls would need to be replaced but for the moment tapestries of his ancestral history and exploits covered the worst of the damage.

It felt good to be holding court in the great hall again. Much as he liked his apartments his true home was on the bridge of his ship. The Lady Sáclair often referred to herself as the mistress of a man already married to the stars.

She wasn't that far wrong.

"Who is next on the agenda for today Preston?" acerbic though the man was, Preston's secretarial skills were unmatched, the product of a splendidly underdeveloped imagination.

"The usual string of marriages, divorces, and inheritance disputes sir. There is one rather pressing petition though," Preston looked down at a data slate, "Father Al'Ashir is requesting, well demanding to be frank, another audience with your lordship."

Sáclair winced. This would make the seventh petition put foreword by Al'Ashir this week, "Very well. I'll see him."

One of the floating marble platforms rose to the great throne, depositing the bearded and scowling Al'Ashir at the foot of his throne. Al'Ashir was wearing the full robes of a member of the Ecclesiarchy, the seals, and ring of his office. It was a less than subtle reminder that although he resided upon Sáclair's ship he was not truly bound by Sácliar's orders except by custom.

"Captain Sáclair," Al'Ashir said in a voice that threatened a sermon at any moment, "I once again put forth my request that I might bring missionaries over to the lost souls on board the Babylon station. It is through no fault of their own that they have not yet found the light of the Emperor. I will not condemn them to hellfire and nothingness for my inaction."

"And I will not alienate our only source of food and fresh water on some ill advised jihad," Sáclair looked at one of the many chandeliers trying to avoid catching Al'Ashir's gaze, "I agree wholeheartedly that they ought to find His light but I will not send missionaries to save their souls at the cost of crew's lives."

Father Al'Ashir bristled, "I'm not advocating that we storm the station and burn out the heretics. They aren't traitors. They're ignorant children. Children can only learn if we teach them."

"Children learn only if they're willing to learn," Sáclair chuckled, "When they're willing to learn and when they're capable of learning the material."

"I seem to remember tutoring a young boy on the history of the Saints who learned them all by memory in spite of his best efforts," Al'Ashir smiled widely, "Or have you forgotten?"

"Not bloody likely," Sáclair reflexively massaged the back of his hands. Al'Ashir had been fond of whipping students with a long stitch when they made mistakes, "I still wake up some nights and have to remind myself that neither am I ten nor am I in the middle of Ecclesial instruction."

"If you'd simply bothered to study the material instead of re-reading the military campaigns of the Primarchs then I wouldn't have had to switch your hands," Al'Ashir smiled kindly, "All I'm asking is that you give me the chance to bring His word to those without it."

"Father you know I cannot approve it," Sáclair picked up his goblet and stood from his throne, stretching his shoulders slightly, "The Inquisitor feels that it would be unwise to do so."

"To the eye with what Hilder thinks. Don't hide behind your debts to him," Al'Ashir swore, "I'm not asking him. I'm asking you. I know you are as God fearing as any other man on this ship, more than most. How can this be anything but the will of the Emperor?"

Sáclair bristled at the mention of his debts to the Inquisitor. Ones obligations of honor simply weren't something one discussed in polite company, certainly not with one's priest, "Father, for the love of all that is holy use your head. We're in the middle of nowhere. We many never get back. If and when we get back to His holy dominion we can inform the nearest crusade fleet that there are a series of populated worlds under xenos influence but until that point it might be best not to give them the impression that we might bring a crusade fleet down on them."

"And if we can convince them to find the light without the use of such crude measures?" Al'Ashir was not about to be side tracked from his goal, "What then? Are we better men for having forced men into His light that would have gone willingly? Must we enact pogroms and genocide where words will do? No I will not tolerate the heretic but the abuse of the ignorant and uninformed is equally barbaric."

Sáclair rubbed his temple with the palm of his hand searching for the correct worlds when he felt a supple and elegant hand resting on his shoulder. He turned around and came face to face with the soft porcelain face of an angel. The Lady Sáclair had arrived.

He smiled and kissed her on the lips and grabbed a generous handful of her hips, "Darling, it is good to see you."

The Lady Sáclair quirked her lip, "And you husband," she nodded to the holy man and reluctantly removed Sáclair hand for proprieties sake, "Father Al'Ashir lovely to see you once again."

"And you madam," Al'Ashir grinned wildly, "Radiant as always my Lady you outshine the stars. Were I fifty years younger and not already bound to the Word I would move the stars themselves for a face like that."

"Were you not vowed to celibacy," Laughed the Lady, "I would fear you intend to steal me from my good husband." She laughed dryly, "My husband tolerates no other man to flirt with me as you do."

"I tend not to fear the advances of any man who cannot open a jar unassisted," Sáclair sipped as his wine and stared at Al'Ashir's look of mock outrage, "Oh come off it Father Al'Ashir, half the time you talk about the great crusades in your sermons I wonder if you're talking from first hand experience. Were someone to tell me that you stood on the great mount with Gilliman himself I wouldn't even question it."

"A pity you will not let me share the thrill of my experiences with the Alliance then," Al'Ashir continued, "I'm sure they could benefit from the moral truths of it."

"Al'Ashir," he sighed, "I cannot."

"Husband," The lady strode forward and put her arms round his waist, resting her head on his chest, "There can be no harm in allowing him to petition the Inquisitor in person. I'm sure that Misters Danzig and Gazan are in want of a priest to oversee their confession," She smiled dazzlingly at Father Al'Ashir, briefly small emeralds inserted into each tooth, "If the Inquisitor forbids it so be it but let the decision rest on the one who wishes it so."

Al'Ashir was formidable enough with those he liked. The Inquisitor was a meddlesome stranger. Yes, yes it made sense to allow that. Sáclair laughed rowdily, "Very well good wife mine, so shall it be."

"I acquiesce to your wisdom," Al'Ashir bowed slightly, "I look forwards to preaching to those in need of His word." His hand was tapping at the holy book at his side like wild with anticipation.

"If he acquiesces," Sáclair reminded Al'Ashir gently.

"When, not if," Al'Ashir laughed, "With the will of the Emperor all things are simply a matter of when."

"Oh very well _when_ he acquiesces if it must be so," Sáclair snapped his fingers for a new goblet of wine, "How in the devil do you plan to preach to them? That devil box of a translator butchers every other word I say."

"Child," Al'Ashir shook his head, "One does not let a machine speak for him. One must teach the word of the Emperor from their heart. So it is that I have been learning the language of the Alliance so that they might hear from my heart."

"You speak the Alliance language already?" The Lady Sáclair blinked.

"In a manner of speaking," Al'Ashir evaded the question, "I apologize my Lord and Lady Sáclair. I must be going. The next freighter leaving in a matter of twenty minutes. I will already have to rush to get there."

Sáclair watched the priest retreat with mild amusement. Poor Hildy wouldn't know what hit him. He idly took the new goblet of wine offered to him by Preston, "Perfect. Just perfect."

* * *

Lord Refa had great taste in liquor judging by the year on the bottle but Londo suspected his talents leaned more in the way of drinking liquor than serving it. The fine crystal glasses clinked together clumsily as Lord Refa poured a generous measure of port into each of them. One did not, however, complain when someone of higher standing poured you a drink, much less if he was an under qualified servant.

Then again they were now on equal social standing weren't they? His household had enlarged due to his good fortune a number of parcels of land and property now sat in his household trusts, each covertly gifted by an appreciative friend in the aristocracy. Even as he sat the soft snipping of scissors reminded him that Vir was enlarging the crest of his hair to reflect his new importance.

Refa smiled with polite and friendly insincerity, "So we set up monitoring stations near quadrant 37 to keep an eye on the Narn buildup. We heard that you would personally take care of the problem. But of course I'm sure you understand our skepticism," he chortled and trailed off.

"Yes I'm sure it sounded quite absurd," Londo basked in the moment.

"More like insane," Refa carried the drinks over and passed one to Londo, "But then the probes went silent. Sensors confirmed that the entire Narn outpost had been wiped out. I would be very interested to know how you did that ambassador." His eyes shone expectantly but Mollari was no fool.

"Yes, I'm sure that you would," the two men laughed together as old friends, though neither of their smiles reached their eyes. The joys of court life.

"We are also very interested in your budding friendship with the Empire," Refa spun the liquid around in his glass and clicked his tongue against his teeth, "I must confess that we were somewhat surprised that you had agreed to make such a large gift of good will to them," he waved a hand suggestively at Londo's shocked look, "Come now Mollari, you hid it well but not perfectly enough to conceal such a substantial amount of irregular cargo heading to a diplomatic way station. One might even think that the appearance of this new military power in the galaxy were connected with each other."

Londo snorted impolitely, "One might think but one would be very much wrong."

Refa turned his back to Londo an sidled over to the plush couch, flopped down and draped himself over it, "Very well, keep your secrets for now. What matters is that you have saved our people another embarrassing surrender by our idiot Emperor."

Londo quirked his brow, the Emperor was not the most popular of leaders but most Centauri limited their complaints to dark mutterings about the Narn 'appeasement.'

Refa sipped at the amber liquid in contemplation, "What you did required independence of thought, initiative, courage, and a rather large and aggressive strike force that you have managed to assemble without anyone knowing about it. Even the Narns don't suspect it was us." He gave the ambassador a meaningful glance "Or more precisely you. We need more people like you Mollari."

Vir's comb snagged on a bit of hair and Londo winced, "For what?"

Refa's lips twitched, unspeaking. His eyes wandered to the squat form of Vir as he preened Londo's crest. Londo nodded to his attendant, "He can be trusted."

"The Emperor is old sick and frightened he's a pitiful figure. With the recent death of his son there's no clear line of succession. When the time comes my associates and I intend to fill that vacuum. It will not be easy. There will be resistance from the old guard. Overcoming that resistance may require force. Can we count on your support Ambassador?" It all flowed out in a great rush, Lord Refa's excitement clearly mounting with each syllable.

"What you are asking could be considered treason." Londo rubbed his fingers together; the effort of keeping his voice calm was making him jittery.

Refa nodded slowly, his eyes searching Londo's posture and disposition, "Or the first step to restoring our people to their proper place in the galaxy depending on who writes the history books. I think it will be us," his voice excited, "What do you think?"

The rightful place of the Republic in the galaxy, Londo's head filled with visions of the great Centauri Empire of old stretching back out and grabbing the stars themselves.

Londo held up his glass to that of Lord Refa, "I think that we have a great deal of work ahead of us."

* * *

The Imperial Ambassador sat straight backed on the chair across the desk from John, his golden skull mask glinting with soft plumes of Purple static. The small twitching man sat in the chair next to the Ambassador, adjusting a matte black re-breather.

John hated the masks though not as much as he hated the Ambassador's bodyguard. Skitarii Thross would be in every meeting with the Ambassador, standing in the distance. He never spoke, never laughed, and never even seemed to be breathing. He simply stood there staring hatefully at Miss Winters, arms crossed, growling slightly as she shifted in her chair. Ivanova had insisted that Miss Winters be present at all meetings to ensure that the Ambassador not use his own psychic abilities to ill effect.

The Ambassador apparently found her presence to be hilariously funny.

John felt the bodyguard's optics staring him down as he spoke to the Hilder, "I'm sorry to say this Ambassador but I need you to move your warship out of Babylon Five orbit. This is a diplomatic station, part of our charter demands that we do not allow foreign military vessels to berth here for any length of time." John smiled and waited as Jak started to repeat what he said. The translation computer sat turned off at the Ambassador's request, he had distaste for any sort of device that recorded his voice. It was probably some sort of social taboo but it would have made this sort of thing substantially easier.

The Ambassador raised his hand, cutting Jak off, "I understand what you speech. Listening to your words I have. Your meaning is shared." Jak politely whispered in the harsh Imperial language and the Ambassador nodded, "… meaning is understood."

John blinked in surprise, "You're picking up English very quickly."

"I listen," Ambassador Hilder nodded curtly, "It is necessary. Complex words are lost, like a child I speak."

"The Ambassador has a talent for languages," Jak interjected in accented English looking distinctly pleased with himself. Jak seemed to take unnatural pleasure in knowing he was cleverer than those with whom he conversed, "And we have taken a personal interest in fostering friendship with your race." The Ambassador tapped his hand against Sheridan's desk twice, silencing his translator.

"And we appreciate it," John smiled politely and poured himself a cup of coffee, "Would you care for some?"

"I appreciate much, thank please," the Ambassador reached over and took the porcelain mug in his gloved hand, "Hospitatity is wise between friends."

The Imperials Ambassador always referred to the humans as friends, though only in private. No doubt he offered sumilar framiliarities with the Ambassadors of the non-aligned worlds as well. Yet for all the grotesque imagery and terrifying physical presence of the Imperial agents the Ambassador was positively paternal in his manner.

_ "__Infinitas infinitio Spende_ no move." He nodded his head firmly as though the matter were settled, "What other you request?"

"No," John said patiently, "You will movie it into neutral space somewhere else. It doesn't have to be far away, but **yes **it will move."

"Not military ships no need move yes?" The Ambassador rambled in his half-coherent English patois, "Not military ship keep here. So keep here." He motioned to the station floor.

"Yes," John tried to wade through the sentence structure but with no luck. He glanced at the silent Jak, "A non military ship may be granted permission to stay here _briefly_."

Ambassador Hilder cocked his head confusedly and looked to Jak, saying a long string of something in his native language. They chattered at each other for a good thirty seconds before Jak smiled and looked at John.

"Captain Sheridan," the man twitched in a friendly manner, "_Infinitas infinitio Spende, _or _Endless Bounty_ as it would be in your language, is not a military vessel. Not even remotely so, it is under armored, under equipped, and overall outclassed by the Imperial Navy. We aren't to be trifled with," he hastily corrected himself, "But we are not a military vessel."

"You expect me to believe that a shielded ship over half the length of this military installation is simply a courier? You expect my government to do the same?" Sheridan stood up and paced round the room to where the Ambassador and his aide were sitting, leaning up against the edge of the table, "Even if that's true my government is still going to require that you move a safe distance away from the station. One of the other planets in system would do but you cannot keep it in orbit of this particular planet."

He stared into the gilded skull that the Imperial Ambassador wore over his face. Small static discharges sparked off the helmet at odd moments, making it difficult to stare into the Ambassador's eyes. They stood in silence just staring, each waiting for the other to break.

"We get grain and water," flowed the Ambassador's elegant patois, "And we move the ship. Is this," he muttered in the Imperial language searching for the proper words, "acceptable?"

"It will do for now," John nodded conciliatorily. Earthdome really only needed him to say he was making 'progress' with the Imperial Ambassador, "I was also wondering about the cultural exchange we had discussed. We are more than willing to exchange our entire historical records for as much of yours as you feel comfortable sharing."

The Ambassador laughed and John's face creased into a frown of consternation, "I'm sorry is there something I'm missing in the translation." Imperial humor was insufferably obtuse.

Jak, fidgeted about though a sack at his side. The soft jingling of crystal against crystal heralded him pulling out a long, thin piece of quartz and holding it out on his palm, "An exchange of cultural data was already part of our agenda. The history of the Empire is long, and at times confusing but this crystal contains a summary of the most important events of the past ten thousand calendar years."

"Wow," John took the crystal and felt the cool weight of it in his palm, "Ten thousand years? How old is your species," his cheeks reddened, "That is, providing that isn't a rude question."

"We estimate around fifty thousand calendar years," Jak played with the long cord of his breathing mask. It twisted and shifted warping the sound of his voice, "Though anything before around ten thousand years ago becomes unreliable. There were certain… complications."

"We prefer not discuss the Dark Age," Ambassador Daul bowed his head, flashing gold gothic lettering on the dome of his helmet, "Sad speech is for different time. Now we discuss Magos Frist." The ambassador shifted his baroque cloak of firs and leather covering his ornate pressure suit to better reach a metal disk attached to his belt. He tapped the scroll on Sheridan's desk and a small image of what might once have been a woman appeared. In the pale Green light of the hologram she looked altogether inhuman.

"Yes, the priestess of the machines," John tripped over her title. The concept of scientific research being a religious pursuit was wholly alien to him. How the two professions meshed was a mystery, "She's coming today then is she?"

"She wishes to observe your machines. She decide which are and are not will of _Omnissiah_," the chair creaked and shifted as ambassador stood eye to eye with the Captain, "Her judgments the voice of the cog. _Final_. I not dispute. Unable to dispute."

"And if she finds us lacking?" John's tone carried an edge to it. The Imperial Ambassador's voice held a tone of threat in it that he didn't appreciate.

"Unfortunate," The ambassador picked up the disk of the table and passed it to his bodyguard, "Much unfortunate."

"I don't appreciate threats against my station Ambassador," John poked his finger into the Ambassadors chest. Before he knew it a powerful hand was gripping his own at the wrist, metallic fingers cutting into the flesh. Thross, the Ambassador's bodyguard did not appreciate John's closeness to his master.

John scowled at the face to half-face with the glaring bodyguard as a sharp pain burned in his wrist, "Ambassador Hilder control your man."

The Ambassador barked something in the Imperial language and released his wrist. "_Skitarii Thross_ take position seriously," Daul waved the bodyguard back to the wall, "Perhaps too seriously. Are you alright?" He stood and reached for John's wrist in concern.

John recoiled from the Ambassador's grasp as Talia stood up and moved towards John protectively, "I beileve it's time to assert my position as mediator in the discussion, we must end for the moment."

"Yes," John massaged his wrist and winced as he pressed down and pain flared, "This meeting is over. We will meet again in six hours when your Machine priest arrives." He glared at the bodyguard, "And I expect mister Thross to be out of my sight for the next week at the very least. I will have armed guards at our next meeting."

"Throne's light shine upon you," The Ambassador interlocked his fingers in front of his chest in a vague imitation of the double-headed imperial eagle and bowed before striding out of the room, cape and coat billowing behind him.

The door to his office slid shut and John swore loudly. He gingerly tapped the link on his left hand so as not to move the arm too much, "Dr. Franklin can you please get someone up to the Commander's office? I need you to fuse a fractured wrist."

* * *

Delenn's fingers fumbled slightly as the pen swooped across the page, smudging the cursive script. Her hands hadn't responded properly to what she wanted them to do since the change. Human muscles were strong but clumsy, ill suited to the elaborate Minbari calligraphy. A pity, she'd always been proud of her flowing written script. Still pride goeth before the fall, as the humans were prone to saying.

She'd have to remember to learn more human phrases and proverbs. There was so much to learn about her new life, about the race she'd become part of. But that would have to wait for the moment, she had diplomatic duties to catch up on. The letter in front of her was her third attempt at writing an invitation for Ambassador Daul. It would more than likely be the third unanswered invitation as well.

Lennier leaned over the invitation, "Delenn I could do this for you if you wished me to. I would not think less of you for letting me help."

"You are kind Lennier," Delenn rolled the pen around between her fingers considering the next words to write, "But I must learn to do this myself. If I do not learn now I well may put it off forever and that would not do at all."

"It isn't the matter of writing that I refer to Satai Delenn," Lennier let the silence fill in his meaning after his words. The Imperial Ambassador and his retinue clearly, wholly, and unapologetically despised the Minbari.

"They will learn to accept with time Lennier," Delenn shoved her hair to the side, "We cannot expect them to accept us so soon after we attack while their are wounded and limping to a safe harbor. We started a war with the humans for less"

"Satai Delenn I suspect their distaste for our species goes far beyond the incident of the Trigati. They are a very troubling people." Lennier placed a cup of spiced tea on the table that smelled temptingly of ripe fruit.

"As were we before the coming of Valen," Delenn smiled and lifted the cup with both hands, careful not to spill. Lennier was really so young sometimes, "Wisdom comes with time."

"Wisdom," echoed a metallic voice as the door swung open, "Comes to those with open hearts and willing minds."

Delenn stood up, bowing in greeting, "Ambassador Kosh I was not expecting you. How may I help?" The Vorlon rarely dropped in unannounced and never did so without a goal in mind. Delenn hadn't seen him since in private since before she'd activated the process to change her genetic structure.

"The Circle widens," the Vorlon glided into the middle of the room, his single red optic flitting about. The suit twitched and flashed with every word. As Kosh reached the table he looked down at the letter and stopped.

"Ambassador Kosh?" Delenn prompted after a few moments of pregnant silence.

"Tainted," The Vorlon said, his voice dripping with contempt, "Arrogant."

"Does the circle have no place for the Imperials in it?" Delenn picked up her invitation and gazed at the still drying ink.

"All have their place in the circle, now or later," Kosh looked at the letter a second time with equal contempt, "But to travel to the third space is folly. What lives beyond is not meant to be."

Delenn quirked her head, "What is the third space?"

"A mistake," The crystals on Vorlon's chest flashed with each wheezing, raspy word, "The third space taints all those who travel though it. Do not trust those who walk it freely, they bring nightmares with them."

"Are they servants of Shadow?" Delenn worried, "Has the enemy moved so soon?"

"All enemies move eventually," Kosh started, "but not always the ones we prepare for."

"And are we prepared for what comes?"

"Perhaps," Kosh considered the matter, "Perhaps." Kosh turned and glided out of the room, "The circle ever widens and ever twists."

Delenn looked down at her invitation, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the rubbish bin. She could always try again later.

* * *

The bazaar was packed with more bustling and chattering xenos than Danzig cared to count. It was simply perverse to see that many xenos chatting, cavorting, and commiserating with humans. With a great shudder and a sigh of frustration he turned to Gazan, "How far is it to where we're meeting the Inquisitor?"

Gazan shifted the thong of leather he was leading the Inquisitor's servitor about the station with to his left hand and pulled out a slip of paper, "Two span more I think," he tilted the map to the side, "Or six."

"Which is it? Two or six?" Danzig leaned over to look at the scrap of paper, taking care not to step on the trailing tentacles of the servitor. Even deactivated they could easily give burns and a nasty shock.

"Damned if I know," he passed the scrap of paper to Danzig, "See if you can read this any better than I. "

Jak had, in a fit of pique, written the instructions in Merican Gothic. One of the major languages of High Terra, Merican Gothic was universally recognizable and universally hated for its situational grammar and hodge-podge collection of borrowed words. Anyone who attended the Schola Imperialis ostensibly became 'fluent' in High Merican-root Gothic but few learned more than scraps in their native tongue. The Damascan variant of the Imperial cult didn't even use that much.

"Damn," he twisted the inscrutable mess of complex characters that circled the vague map on its side, "To the Eye with it. We're going to have to wander this Throne cursed xenos mess for hours."

His words felt limp as they fell from his lips. Xenos mess it might well be but over since the discovery of common ancestry of the Alliance and Empire Danzig could not help but feel a morbid fascination for the common areas in which the sentient species engaged in commerce. He'd been to borderland outposts where alien and human met to trade before but the Babylon station was different. Even upon the rich commerce planets that bordered between xenos and Imperial control there was a constant tension between human and alien, a false air of civility cloaking millennia of hardships between their peoples.

The Babylon station was practically domestic by comparison. The Alliance humans didn't simply accept the presence of xenos on their station they seemed hard pressed to even notice it.

The servitor leaned in the direction of a vendor pushing a cart of cured meats and was yanked backwards by Gazan, "Well let's get to it. I don't fancy myself to be a servitor herder for longer than is absolutely necessary. Galut! We don't have time for that."

The Ogryn had wandered over to the Meat vendor. The purveyor of the meat cart, a squat xenos in a purple dress, chattered quickly and eyed the human sized shape of the astropathic servitor in the silk sack over the Ogryn's ample shoulders with trepidation. Danzig wished the Inquisitor hadn't allowed the Kroot to join the other carrion eaters onboard the ship. The Babylon station denizens were apparently convinced that all the delegation shared the Kroot's distasteful appetites.

"Galut," Danzig walked over to Ogryn and yanked on the sleeve of his tabard, "We aren't stopping here and we certainly aren't eating food that's been prepared by a xenos." The Ogryn ignored him and continued listen to the xenos' ramblings.

"We have less than half an hour to reach the meeting place," Danzig stood between the vendor and the ogryn snapped his fingers in front of the ogryn's face, "Galut do you hear me. We have to get moving."

Gazan ambled over, half dragging the servitor behind him, "We're getting more attention from the locals that I'd prefer." It was true. Half the bazaar was pretending to be looking at displays of xenos artwork rather than starting at the Imperials.

The ogryn's massive head looked down at Danzig, black pressure suit material straining to contain him, "We go a block dat' way den' we make a right at the place wit' da' big fish in front."

Danzig blinked and looked down at the map, "How in the blazes do you know that?"

With a shake of his meaty hand the ogryn motioned to the wall. There, plain as day was a massive brightly colored overhead map of the station complete with a list of points of interest written in three different languages and a little red spot indicating their current position, "I was askin' vendor where it was on the map. Maps are good for finding things."

"That they are Galut," Danzig sighed, "Well let's get to it then. Lead the way Galut, well done."

The ogryn strutted in front of the two Lionheats, positively beaming with pride. Gazan bent in close to Danzig's ear, "If anyone in the regiment ever finds out the ogryn learned Alliance common faster than we did we'll never hear the end of it."

"I won't tell if you don't," Danzig arranged the silk veil draped over his rebreather, "But the ogryn tend to be fast learners. It's just hard to get them to pay attention to anything they don't feel is important."

"Fighting, friends, and fornicating," Gazan chuckled. "The core of all ogryn society."

"We use bigger words and bathe more often Medic Gazan," Danzig stared at the back of the ogryn's head, "But I don't think we base our actions around different things."

"Poetic sir," Gazan eyed a display of odd alien jewelry seemingly carved out of bone. A pair of knob-headed sentients was arguing over the price of some bit of bone puffing off small plumes of perfumed smoke, "Not much in your usual train of thinking, if you'll pardon me saying."

"Never fear to speak your mind Gazan. I'm your superior but we've known each other since the cradle. I trust your judgment."

Gazan snorted, "Sir the Lionhearts all know each other cradle to grave."

"Then I suppose I trust in the judgment and thinking of my regiment," Danzig waved his hand exaggeratedly.

"Even Fadir?" Gazan chortled.

"Perhaps not Fadir," Danzig eyed a column of the large grey biped reptiles. Even before Jak had warned them of the Drazi's temperamental nature he'd already picked them out as being potentially dangerous. Anything with that much bone on the outside of their body couldn't be trusted, "At least where women are concerned. Now tell me Gazan is it just me or are we fixing to find ourselves in the middle of some local color?"

A number of Drazi were marching up and down the Bazaar in groups of four or five, clustered into groups of either Green or Purple sashes. Their pacing, their posture, and the way their scales flared at the neck caused the skin on the back of Danzig's neck to stand on end, "If the local color involves the Drazi patrolling the bazaar in squads then yes I'd say we were in for a heck of a lot of local color.

"Galut!" Gazan pressed on the back of the ogryn, "We need to leave as soon as is possible."

"Too late," with a growl and sound of breaking china the bazaar burst into an all out brawl between the two factions of Drazi. A stray plate soared through the air and crashed down onto Galut's head. Suitably angered by the Green sauce dripping down his visor the ogryn bellowed, unceremoniously dropped the silk bag carrying the astropathic avatar, and charged into the brawl grabbing a Drazi and tossing him the length of the bazaar.

It was a mess of shouting, grabbing and clawing between the Drazi and those trying to get out of their way. Dazing balled his fist and struck as hard as he could between the eyes of the nearest Drazi. He yelped with pain and cradled his hand as the stunned xenos fell to the ground, the crest of bone was substantially harder than he'd expected.

"Oh hell!" Gazan yelled, "Run Danzig, for the love of all that's holy run! He's coming for you!"

Danzig laughed as he turned to Gazan, the man worried too much and this was the best proper bar room scuffle he'd gotten in to in weeks. He smiled, opened his mouth, and felt blinding pain in his chest as an electroshock flail seared through his pressure suit and cooked the flesh beneath. He fell to the ground frothing in pain and trying to figure out what was going on. As his eyes glazed over and he fell into a bloodless stupor he heard the sounds of discharging weapons and saw the servitor fall in a heap on the ground in front of Gazan.

He croaked and smiled up at his old friend, hot blood seeping out of the tear along his chest. He feebly pressed his hands along the slice in his chest trying to keep his entrails inside his chest. "I believe we'll be a bit late for the Inquisitor's scheduled meeting."

* * *

Vir didn't like Lord Refa. Lord Refa was of the old guard, the sort of barbaric person who thought of servants as property and employees as only a step above slaves. He would have been well suited for the court of the late Countess Leenar, cheering as she roasted Narn dissidents alive on a spit.

The sort of man his family wished him to become.

Vir was very grateful to be seeing the back of him. A pity that the Babylon customs officers didn't accept bribes, he would gladly have expedited the speed at which Lord Refa's transport shuttle left. As it was they had to sit with Lord Refa in customs for a good hour before his ship was ready to leave.

An hour of Lord Refa's terrifyingly racist Narn jokes. An hour that Vir was not sad to see ending.

"Goodbye Refa. You will give my regards to the other. For a long time they've been looking for a sign that it's time for our people to step forward into history. I will try to convince them that you are that sign." Londo grasped Lord Refa's hands at the wrists firmly in the hands of friendship.

Refa smiled wryly and walked away, "See you again soon Mollari."

As Lord Refa turned the corner Vir exhaled a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He simply hadn't been made for this sort of posturing and artifice. Sticking him with Ambassador Mollari was some sort of cruel joke on the part of the gods. It simply had to be.

The Ambassador stiffened and gasped, pointing at the arrival gate in astonishment, "Great Maker! It's a Technomage, looks like a human."

Vir squinted at a stern faced, bald man striding through the gate. Other than a distinct scowl and an oversized staff he was strikingly normal, "What's a Technomage?"

"We used to have them back home, long ago. They use science to achieve the appearance of magic," his voice misted over thinking of younger days, "I haven't seen one in years. They don't like to leave their places of power. To see even one of them is a rare thing. To see more than one of them is considered a very bad omen."

The unassuming man was followed by another two similarly garbed scowling figures. They strode across the waiting area, robes swelling round them, never looking anyone in the eye. They made Vir's skin crawl.

"Three, this is definitely not good."

It was just another ill omen in a series that followed the Ambassador. Vir sighed. At least the Ambassador could see this one. Londo always seemed to miss the other danger signs till they'd already passed.

* * *

Dr. Franklin rushed the wounded into the intensive care beds as quickly as was possible. The bazaar brawl had turned into a bloody massacre, he still hadn't gotten the specifics on what happened but four Drazi were confirmed dead by the first responder and another six might well die soon as well as a handful of unfortunate Narn and Minbari in critical condition.

"Get him into bed three. I need him on a drip of two-part paxylin-R and make sure you don't combine it with morphine. He's allergic. Franklin turned to Dr. Hobbes in confusion, "How may are incoming still?"

A haggard sweat stained Dr. Lillian Hobbes shot Dr. Franklin a withering look as she waved a dermal generator over a long laceration in the side of a groaning Minbari, "We can't handle many more sir, we're running out of crash carts as is. We well may have to put the worst cases in cryogenic storage till we can deal with them."

Stephen swore as the door to the med bay burst open, "Not another one!" He rushed over to the groaning form on the stretcher and recoiled in astonishment. Lying on the stretcher was a badly wounded member of the Imperial diplomatic mission.

"Good god," Stephen felt the blood run from his face, "Lou why bring him to me? Watch him die? I haven't got a clue how to fix him."

"Not my idea sir," Lou nodded to an unwounded Imperial helping him carry the stretcher, "He insisted, Gazan that is. According to the security briefings apparently some sort of medical doctor."

The Imperial groaned in pain and the second Imperial chattered angrily and pointed to an unoccupied bed. Lou nodded, "Yeah, yeah, we're moving, we're moving."

"Dr. Hobbes," Franklin stared at the protruding intestine, "How stable are the other patients?"

"Not in a good state sir," the drug dispenser in her hands clicked and hissed as it administered a painkiller to the Minbari on the table in front of her, "But stable enough for us to handle them."

"Good," Dr. Franklin rolled up his sleeves and walked along with the stretcher, "I will be assisting Dr. Gazan."

Dr. Gazan counted down on his fingers from three to one and they shifted the groaning Imperial over to the table. Gazan smiled and talked soft words of comfort in the Imperial language, "Operor nich Verdruß. Ego gesehen recedentia peior verwonding. Vos ero nipozto."

With great care the Imperial Doctor proceeded to remove his helmet and gloves revealing a scarred face half covered in stubble, olive skin and the sort of salt and pepper hair that doctors seemed to get faster than anyone else. He raised his hands and mimed washing them.

"Of course," Dr. Franklin nodded, "Over here." He waved the Imperial doctor over to a sterile sink and handed him a bar of soap. The Doctor thoroughly washed his hands, shaking them dry rather than rubbing them with a towel.

The more that Stephen's expert xeno-biologist eyes roved over the Imperial's features the more striking the similarities in their biology were. He washed his own hands and joined Dr. Gazan at the operating table. The Imperial doctor rooted about in a small back pouch, pulling out a small circular saw.

Franklin looked at the thick layers of flak armor back to the tiny saw and shook his head, "I have something more suited to our needs," he tapped the controls to the overhead device and a thin metal reed popped down from the ceiling. A sliver of white-hot light shot down from it, slicing cleanly through the material of the pressure suit but only slightly burning the skin beneath.

Dr. Gazan swore and looked angry but didn't protest as Stephen helped him peel the armor off the now deliriously muttering Imperial. The flesh around the wound was puckered and angry looking, thick globules of melted plastic and shards of ceramic had lodged themselves in the intestinal walls that would have to be removed before they even attempted to shut the wound.

As he looked over the wounds and examined the damaged organs Stephen became less worried. The Imperial would survive, Stephen was sure of it. He was one of the most skilled experimental xeno-biologists in the galaxy.

Fixing a human was well within his skill set.

* * *

Captain Sheridan leaved over the display squinting at the latest security briefing, squinting slightly, "How long has this fighting been going on?'

"Uh a couple of weeks, it's been building up." Susan had personally been involved in stopping three separate smaller altercations between Drazi but hadn't chalked it up to anything more than drunken stupidity. Never let something go for granted Susan, she had chided herself. You'll always miss things that way. "It's a cultural thing. One every five years all the Drazi divide into two camps and fight it out.

"But it's not a fight to the death?" The Captain tapped the screen pointing to a noteworthy casualty statistic from earlier in the day.

"No, just until the loser gives up or is knocked senseless. The group with the most wins gets to run the Drazi government for the next five years, then it starts all over again.

Or at least that's how it usually goes," Susan chewed her lip in frustration, "Those casualties are actually the fault of one of the Imperials. Apparently one of their servitors suffered a psychotic breakdown and stated attacking anything in sight at the brawl."

"He killed six people?" Captain Sheridan's voice darkened and fire burned in the back of his eyes. A shadow of what he'd been in the war played in his face.

"Six people so far," Susan corrected herself. She paused for a second then, much to her chagrin, added, "But apparently the Imperials with him were wounded trying to get him under control and they only fought in self-defense. I would note that apparently the servitor was equipped with undeclared weapons."

Sheridan's face relaxed and he snapped back into his omnipresent smile as he wandered over to the bar at the side of his office and busied himself with pouring drinks, "There seem to be a number of 'cultural' issues with the Ambassador as of late." He massaged the orthogenic simulator on his wrist.

"It warrants increased security over the Imperial Ambassadorial mission doesn't it." Susan groaned, "I can't say I like dealing with the two problems at once."

"Actually the timing of this is perfect. I've decided that it's time for you to learn the fine art of diplomacy." The glasses clinked in Sheridan's hands a liberal serving of orange liquid in each, "If you could handle the low priority conflicts it would help me to focus on the other problems. Besides added responsibility comes with any promotion. I know it's annoying an inconvenient but…"

Susan shook her head confusedly, "I'm sorry Sir did you just say promotion?

"Yes. Would you like some juice? It's fresh from the hydroponics garden. I told them to leave the pulp in, that's the best part." He placed the glass in her hands, not waiting for a response, "Don't you think so commander? I pushed though the paperwork the day I got here. I think you've more than earned it."

Susan smiled and looked down at her glass of orange juice, "I don't know what to say."

"Thank you would be a good start." Captain Sheridan sipped his juice contentedly.

"Thank you" Susan laughed.

"Now, your first job will be to find a peaceful solution to the Drazi problem, okay?" Captain Sheridan looked down at his watch and placed his empty glass down on the table, "Now if you'll excuse me I have to pay a visit to someone."

Susan sat basking in the glow of what had just happened and rolled the idea of "Commander Ivanova" around in her head a couple times. She smiled, turned her head, and looked back to see the replay of the events that happened prior in the day. The sprawling melee of Drazi kicked and clawed angrily on the screen. Well, nobody ever said her job was easy.

* * *

Kerrigan felt naked without her full cadre of attendants. It was a silly thing but she'd spent so much of the past century constantly being surrounded by a small army of servants, servitors, and bodyguards that not having them all with her for an official function was grating. The Inquisitor had, of course, not been so crass as to request she leave her cadre on the _Endless Bounty_. What sort of dignitary arrives without attendants after all?

Two servitors and four apprentices would be more than sufficient for her needs. She hadn't spent nearly enough time with her apprentices as of late. It would be unwise to allow Iino too much time alone with her students.

Iino was good at his job but insufferably narrow minded. If she allowed him enough time with them he might very well damage their understanding of he holiness of her works. She'd given up her home and her livelihood for her principles. It would not do to lose a student.

Her newest student, Abbas, was seated on the edge of his chair staring out the window, fiddling with the hem of his robe, and intently avoiding making eye contact with Father Al'Ashir, "You're not betraying your faith in the Emperor Abbas."

Abbas stiffened as though he'd just stepped on a live wire and stared at Kerrigan with wide eyes, "I don't know what you mean Magos." His hand shifted to he breast of his shirt, feeling for an Aquilla no doubt.

"My mistake," She stared out the window and pointed in the direction Abbas was staring, "I must have underestimated the interest that you have for garbage scows. You truly are _devoted_ to the Omnissiah. I must confess that even I tend to find the machine spirits of those ancient workhorses to be a bit dull."

Abbas blushed and fiddled with the Aquilla beneath his robes, "It's just," he licked his lips, "Well Magos I haven't gone to confess my sins to father Al'Ashir since I've been in training. The Tech-priests of the ship all pray to the Omnissiah in binary and I can't understand a word of it. I don't mean to disrespect my calling but how can my prayers be heard if I can't speak them?"

"Go an confess to him then," Kerrigan smiled, "Your faith in the Emperor and your devotion to the Omnissiah aren't in conflict child. There's no need to hide your Aquilla beneath your robes either," she smiled as he stopped grabbing at the breast of his robes, "Honestly child what do you think we're saying in binary? Half the time we're saying variations on the same prayers from the Ecclesiarchy's hymn books with additional lines added in to pray for the spirits of the machines."

She leaned in and brushed off his robes, smoothing out the creases his worrying hands had balled into the material, "If confessing your sins to the father brings you peace then go and confess to him," she pulled out a small jeweled Aquilla out of her robes with a mechandrite, "We each the path to the Omassiah in our own way."

Abbas smiled and wandered over to Father Al'Ashir's seat. Kerrigan turned to the soft metallic chuckles of apprentice Sven Tuul as he clicked cheekily binary, "I seem to recall you smacking me senseless for trying to purge myself of sin in the early part of my apprentice hood."

"Apprentice Tuul had apprentice Sáclair pulled out a spiked belt and proceeded to beat himself bloody with it for each minor sin he committed that week I would have intervened for his own welfare," She smacked him softly at the chest her own silvery binary voice trilling in response, "But I suppose one apprentice stupid enough to self flagellate is enough for a lifetime."

"I can hardly be criticized for obeying my faith," Sven said in mock offense.

"I am your Magos Lord," Kerrigan said dryly, "I care to disagree."

Tuul grunted and looked out the window of the grain barge, "It's amazing what these humans have managed without the aide of the STC designs. I wonder how much of it will pass muster?"

"Some definitely, most perhaps," Kerrigan's mood soured, "The humans of this region are altogether too eager to absorb the knowledge and learning of other races."

"Were we not expelled for the same mistress?" Tuul leaned on the wall.

"Perhaps," Kerrigan watched the shuttles dart in and out of the wide mouth of the station, "But in seeking knowledge one must temper it with a generous measure of caution else go the way of Faust the Despised."

"I must confess mistress that I wasn't ever fully told why Faust is so despised by the Adeptus Mechanicus," he shrugged, "Other than the obvious destruction of Arturus VIII that is. I've never heard of an Inquisitor quite as hated by the Magi of Oita."

"They hate for reasons far more troubling than the destruction of a forge world child," Kerrigan sighed, "I was only told the story in the vaguest of terms. As you no doubt are aware the Magos of one forge will guard their knowledge jealously, even from those of our own order. The Magos of Arturus VIII were entrusted with a relic of the dark ages in their vaults. As to the function it served or form it took I can only speculate but the devotees of the Omnissiah do not guard trivial knowledge in the deep vaults of the forge."

She thought of the two broad shouldered servitors behind her. They were the sort of stocky built war servitors favored by those of the Oita forge but they weren't even close to as sophisticated as the war machines of Arturus had been. The Machines of Oita were delicate creations of finesse. Those of Arturus were brutish and well suited for fighting the Green Tide to the galactic south. Even with their armies of servitors, titans, and Skitarii they'd fallen to the force of Faust's combined forces.

"It is for plundering the deeps that we hate him apprentice Tuul," Kerrigan started to feel the weight of her own considerable age, "The secrets of the machine spirit are ours to keep and ours alone. Those who rob us of knowledge and learning will know our wrath."

Tuul grunted. They stared out the window in silence listening to the soft prayers of penitence of Abbas in his native Damascan tongue.

* * *

Vir finds Londo at the bar, "Ah Ambassador! There you are. I've been looking everywhere for you. The Abbai delegation is waiting to see you. They had an appointment, they wanted to talk about," Londo grabbed Vir and shoved him into a chair. Vir winced with the collision, "On the other hand maybe I'll just sit here a while."

"Vir," the Ambassador twisted his hand, swirling the liquid about in his glass, "Do you believe in fate?"

Vir swallowed and thought about it, "Well actually I believe there are currents in the universe. Eddies and tides that pull us one way or the other, some we have to fight. Others we have to embrace."

"Unfortunately the ones we have to fight look exactly like the currents we have to embrace. The current's we think are the ones that are going to make us stronger, those are the ones that are going to destroy us. The ones that we think are going to destroy us, they're the ones that are going to make us stronger. Now the other currents," Vir stopped at the furious look of strained tolerance the Ambassador's face.

Ambassador Mollari scowled and smacked his fist on the bar, "Vir! Yes or no!"

"Yes… you know somewhat," Vir stumbled over his words. He never seemed to say the right thing with the Ambassador, "Why."

"I was thinking about what Refa said when he left. That they're looking for a sign back home." His eyes flashed with purpose, "Before our first Emperor too the throne of the Centauri Republic he was visited by three Technomages who gave him their blessing. Now that is a very powerful symbol with those of us who still believe in the old ways."

"They want me to help restore the republic?" Ambassador Mollari waved his arms wide, "It wouldn't hurt to be associated with the Emperor." It was an oddly reasonable thought for Mollari's usually grandiose aspirations. There would of course be a catch; there was always a catch with the Ambassador.

"Yes… I will consult them. It will have considerable influence back home," he smiled and pointed to Vir, "Go to them. Arrange it. I'll be in my quarters."

"Uh Londo… I really don't think I want to do this. Londo?" Vir yelled impotently at the retreating back of the Ambassador. It was hopeless. The Ambassador's mind was made up.

Damn.

Vir sighed deeply and grabbed the Ambassador's discarded glass. As his uncle Foon had always said, "If a man can't find any courage in his heart he might as well look at the bottom of a bottle. He might not find courage but he ought to forget he's a coward for long enough to get the job done."

His uncle Foon hadn't, however, calculated on the Ambassador's fondness for absurdly strong beverages. Vir downed the drink, took a step, and fell into a state of blissful unconsciousness on the floor.

"Odd," Vir's body tingled and relaxed, "I could have sworn the Ambassador wasn't set to get a new shipment of narca essence till next Tuesday."

* * *

It wasn't a flashy side arm. The newer models had more settings and tended to have a better fire rate but Michael Garibaldi was a creature of habit. The pistol had belonged to his partner on Mars during happier days and it had never seemed right to upgrade his pistol any more than it would feel proper to 'upgrade' one's wife. You found one that worked and stuck with it.

He sat at his couch thinking about nothing and everything as he inserted and removed the charge cap from the pistol. The click and whine of the pistol was oddly therapeutic. Click whine, how in the hell had he missed it? Click whine, Jack had been part of his staff for close to two years. No decent chief misses a sleeper agent for two damned years. Click whine, Jack wouldn't be the only sleeper agent on station. He had to assume that everyone could potentially be an agent of the Psi Corps, or whomever it was Jack worked for. Click whine, did he dare to be in charge of the safety of the station?

He was rousted from his thoughts by the chiming of his doorbell, "Yeah come in."

The door swung open and the hale-faced Captain Sheridan stepped into his quarters, "Mr. Garibaldi."

"Captain," Michael put his pistol down on the table and stood. He still hadn't really gotten the measure of Captain Sheridan. He seemed decent enough, and his war record was exemplary but then again so was Jack's.

'I've been expecting you to come by for some time," The Captain chuckled, "Since you hadn't I decided the mountain should visit Mohammed after all. I've spoken with Dr. Franklin. He says you can come back to work any time you like. What do you say?"

"I don't know if I'm ready to come back," Michael sighed, "Or if you even want me back. Maybe it would just be easier if I resigned and everyone moved on." He could always go back to Mars or even Brooklyn. It had been a long time since he'd been earth-side.

"Probably but the Universe doesn't give you any points for doing things that are easy," the Captain wandered over to his table and picked up the pistol and palmed it, feeling the weight of it, "Your record is colorful to say the least. But everything I've heard suggests that you know this station better than anyone else."

The Captain put the pistol on the table, "I would be foolish to toss away a valuable resource without at least trying to work together. I need someone I can trust running security. I'd like it to be you."

The Captain sauntered to the door, "Now if you decide you'd rather be someplace else, I'll understand. I'll hold your job open as long as I can." he paused as he walked out the door, "Don't take too long ok."

Michael sat back down and started to pop the energy cap back in and out if his pistol and thought.

Click whirr.

Click whirr.

Click whirr.

* * *

The chambers of the Babylon Five Advisory council were full of Drazi. The two factions sat in the bleachers that were normally occupied by the various dignitaries of the Non-Aligned Worlds, split down the middle into partisan groups of Green and Purple. It was as though someone had drawn a line down the middle that neither of side dared cross.

For the moment at least the Drazi seemed content to just stare at each other angrily rather than openly brawl with each other, which was something at least. Susan, emboldened by her new rank pins, strode in front of the two self-proclaimed faction leaders.

"As you all know, we're having a bit of a problem here right now. The aforementioned problem being that you keep trying to beat each other senseless; Banging up against bulkheads, pounding, bugging, jumping, and generally carry on crankly. While some of the other species wouldn't mind if you wiped each other out, even they would prefer you did so quietly but this station is dedicated to finding peaceful solutions to our problems." the Drazi whispered to each other, nodding and pointing, "I would like to find one here. Now you can help by letting me to understand the conflict between the two sides that you've set up."

The Purple Drazi leader pointed to the Green Drazi leader, "Green."

The Green Drazi leader nodded as though that made perfect sense, pointed back to the Purple leader and said, "Purple."

Susan massaged her temples. This might be a long meeting, "No I understand that there are two factions but what is your point of contention, where do you disagree with each other?"

The two leaders looked at her in total confusion responding once again with "Purple," and "Green" respectively.

"Yes but who gets to wear the Purple sash and who gets to wear the Green sash," Susan pointed to the leader sashes, "Is it based on income or caste or rank or…"

The Green Drazi leader looked to the Purple Drazi leader, shrugged his shoulders and started to speak, "We put Green and Purple in great barrel, equal to numbers of Drazi. Then we reach in. We take. Where there was one Drazi people now there are two. The two fight until there are one." The Purple leader nodded emphatically.

"That's it?" Susan stuttered gob smacked, "It's totally random? Arbitrary? Then how do you choose the leader for either side?"

"One cloth has mark of leadership. He who takes leader cloth is leader. He who takes Green cloth is Green and follows Green leader. He who Purple is Purple and follows Purple leader."

"Ok so in other words," Susan looked to the front row of the bleachers and pointed to the nearest green and purple Drazi, "Would you two step forward for a second please?"

They stood and approached her. Susan smiled and reached towards the purple silk, "So what you're trying to tell me is that if I take this Purple sash off of him," she lifted the purple shawl, "and put it onto him that this one thing alone is enough," As the purple fabric settled into the shoulders of the green sashed Drazi the entire room burst into a swinging melee of screaming, punching, kicking, and biting Drazi.

Before Susan knew it she was at the bottom of a large pile of thrashing Drazi, screaming in pain from a compound fracture protruding from her thigh.

* * *

Sørian didn't even dare breathe as the Magos and her small party passed him. It was unlikely she would recognize him, especially in the plainclothes of the common freight worker rather than the wardrobe and livery more fitting of his station but at this point he wasn't planning on leaving anything to chance.

He hadn't dared to use a spell of concealment, not this close to the Inquisitor. His magic had become unpredictable as of late and a flare would mean the end of everything for him. Even if he escaped the Inquisitor's rage Phoneutria would end him for disobeying orders and coming to the Babylon station.

"Move your ass Cag," grunted the pilot as he shifted a crate to the hover pallet, "We aint' got all day and I want to be off this accursed xenos cesspool as fast as we can work it. And keep the pressure helmet on at all times. I see your ugly mug out of it even once and I'll shoot you myself to save us a trip to quarantine. You _kin neh_?" His voice grunted incoherently in the dialect of the freighter captains for a while.

Sørian flipped a rude hand gesture in response and shoved the cart forwards. He was normally above such menial tasks but his devotion to Slaanesh had ensured that his form was at least capable of such exertion. The real Cag was dead, or would at least be so before anyone caught the wiser. Hexathehelidae could at least be trusted to ensure that much.

He pushed the heavy cart forwards. Small plumes of antigravity repulsor energy cascaded on the ground, cracking and shifting. With every step Sørian felt his heart race. It was a fantastic sensation, danger always felt wonderfully exciting.

"Oh bloody fantastic," he muttered as he reached the bottom of the freighter's ramp, "Just bloody fantastic."

Not even three meters away was Inquisitor Hilder, standing as impassive and uncaring as ever. The tempting weight of a single shot plasma pistol rested underneath his robes. It would be easy. It would just be so easy. It would be easy and he would be dead as a doorbell.

That is to say they would both be dead. Sørian could not hope to kill the Inquisitor in plain view of so many allies and survive. No, it was best to bide his time. There would be another chance.

His mission was too important to risk it either way.

He shoved the cart across the room till he met an overbearing man standing in front of a pile of sacks of grain. His slightly abnormal proportions and prominent brow marked him as xenos. His dress and accent marked him as Centauri.

The Centauri were a self-centered, decadent, arrogant, irreverent society of amoral pagans. In short they were perfect for his patron, or they would be with proper guidance. The arrogantly sneering Centauri snorted as he took in the disheveled appearance of Sørian. He spoke and a small computer at his waist translated into plain gothic, "Let's get this over with. I prefer to spend as little time around you low breed servants as is possible."

Sørian appreciated the insult. It made what he was planning easier. He bowed in deference, as he knew the freight workers had been instructed to and started piling the sacks of grain onto the hover pallet.

"I haven't got all day, lets get this moving." The Centauri stood and watched him pile bags of grain onto the pallet in the way one might watch an interesting animal at the zoo perform an unexpected trick, not bothering to offer help

Sørian's heart raced as he hefted the bags. His eyes flitting to the Inquisitor and the Magos, if they didn't leave soon he didn't know if he was going to be able to pull off his plan. He swore softly to himself under his breath, "Come on, leave damn it leave."

After ten heart wrenching minutes the Inquisitor bowed to the Magos and led her out of the docking bay, their respective retinues close at hand. He counted to two hundred to be sure that they were really gone then let his plan go into action.

He forced himself to trip as he started carrying the last bag, overturning and allowing a small golden ring to come off his finger and roll in the direction of the Centauri. He quickly righted himself and tossed the bag onto the pallet. Rushing back to the freighter even as the Centauri yelled that he'd dropped something.

"The hell's he yelling about?" Grunted the pilot as Sørian boarded.

Sørian shrugged exaggeratedly, "No idea. Damned xenos went mad when I suggested the Emperor was mightier than his god."

The pilot nodded and hit the door controls, sealing the airlock tightly and silencing the shouts of the Centauri, "Well I can't blame you for telling the damned xenos scum the truth of our salvation and his damnation. Let's get out of this scum pit as quick as we can."

The ring was valuable, if he left the Centauri would no doubt keep it or pawn it. Even in the unlikely event that the Centauri tried to return it to the Imperial mission someone would try to put it on their finger and then his trap would be sprung.

Chaos would prevail.

* * *

Daul was grateful to have Kerrigan's company once again. Her unadulterated enthusiasm for every bit of technology they saw was infectious. The security detail nervously shied away from them as Kerrigan positively trilled with excitement examining the guns and armor they wore. The guards nervously muttered to each other apparently unsure how to take the female cyborg's coos and cries of interest.

"Fantastic, simply fantastic what they've managed since the fall. Why I'd say they've managed to advance further than any society I've seen do without the help of an STC to base their techonology off of, but I suppose they did have the xenotech," she motioned to one of her apprentices, "Tuul does that look like a plasma discharge weapon."

The tall and lean Tuul had a stretched and pinched face that when combined with his robes made him look distinctly like a scarecrow. Still he managed to have a distinctly mischievous air to him in spite of his imposing presence, "Perhaps mistress it is unwise for us to show such an exuberant interest to our guard's weapons. They seem to find it unnerving."

"Nonsense," she shook her head, "It's purely academic they understand." The muttering of the guards combined with what little English he did understand seemed to indicate quite the opposite however. He caught the phrases "raving lunatic" and "monster" more than once.

"Kerrigan," Daul smiled widely behind his mask and tried to bring her back to reality, "It's a pleasure to see you once again. I hope your travels were not too taxing. We really must get to the business at hand."

"Not at all," Kerrigan was eyeing everything in sight with wrapped attention, "The journey proved most enlightening. I must confess I'm positively thrilled by the prospect of reverse engineering some of this technology." She snapped her fingers and her attendants and servitors came to attention, "There will be time to examine it later my loves. Now Daul where is the quarters where we will be housed."

"In good time Magos," Daul waved over Cairn, "First I wish to discuss the other matter. The other matter." Kerrigan's mission on the station was twofold. First and foremost she was here to determine if the humans of the Alliance had any technologies that could ethically be brought into the blanket of the Omassiah and more importantly to deliver information to Daul that could not be trusted to any courier or transmitter.

He bowed politely to the guards escorting him and said, "Please show us to the Ambassadors quarters," in as close as he could manage to English and motioned for Kerrigan to follow. Cairn started chatting avidly with Tuul in binary, the two of them laughing like a pair of plains jackals. Daul shook his head, "I swear one day I will understand something that boy says. I've never failed to learn a language yet."

"I think you'd best give up on learning binary," chuckled Kerrigan, "It doesn't exactly function for organic minds."

"Yes," groused Daul as he followed the black-suited guards, "I'd suspected as much."

"Where are the Lionhearts?" piped up a young voice from behind them. It was Abbas, the bastard child of Sáclair, if Daul's eyes did not deceive him. Kerrigan raised an eyebrow and Abbas looked ashamed, "This is to say… I'm sorry for speaking out of turn mistress."

"I swear boy one day you will learn not to apologize for asking proper questions," Kerrigan shook her head, "You're slipping Daul, when a boy of less than twenty can notice your glaring lack of security it's time to consider retiring."

Daul bristled, "I have Cairn with me, he's more than enough for the moment."

"Inquisitor of all the people in the world I expected to have to remind that they are not invincible, you are the last I expected to have to do so for. Cairn is a superb warrior but he is not invincible or omnipresent. Where are the Lionhearts," Kerrigan said, motioning the oversized servitors over to her side, "We aren't in danger at the moment are we? Have they been taken?"

"Calm yourself woman," sighed Daul, "I'm in no danger so long as the Alliance believes us to be allies. I've never run into a bunch of humans as blindly inclined to trusting outside influences as these ones are. I have near unrestricted access to the ship. This group," he pointed to the black suited security officers, "Are an honor guard of some sort."

"How much of the station is 'unrestricted?" Asked Kerrigan pointedly.

"Enough," Daul said pointedly, "And I'm not sure how much time we have till we walk within range of a translation computer. I'd appreciate knowing the content of your message to me."

"Of course," Kerrigan nodded, "The matter of the two murdered tech priests by the Amon Sui has led to some disturbing conclusions. I know for a fact that someone murdered two of my men to gain access to the Dorn unit but to what end I cannot say. The door was opened twice and certain chemicals where injected into the Dorn unit, though if they were both injected by the same person or by two men with different agendas I cannot say."

"What chemicals exactly?" Daul rubbed the pommel of his sword nervously, "Be specific." The prospect of having someone sabotage the Dorn unit was terrifying. If something were to go wrong with an Arco-flagellant the consequences for the diplomatic mission could be disastrous.

"The first we assume to be some sort of toxin though I cannot be sure if it was a venom or something designed to damage the psychological conditioning of the unit. The second time was anti-viral and agapic restorative agents, the sort we use to resuscitate recently dead brain and body tissue. I assume that there were two separate actors and the second tried to undo the work of the first," Kerrigan cocked her head, "Though for the life of me I haven't been able to find a damn trace of the bloody toxin."

Daul blinked in surprise at Kerrigan's sudden course language, it was wildly out of character, "None at all?"

"Faest ran the tests himself," Kerrigan shook her head resignedly, "Osma's tracking down the Apothecary where the restorative anti-agapic was made with the help of Iino. We'll know more once they've finished."

"I don't like not knowing what's going on with my men," Daul grunted angrily.

"I thought you wanted to be rid of that servitor once and for all ages ago," chided Kerrigan, "You despise the damned thing."

"Yes," Daul agreed, "I do, but it's for me to decide when the damn thing lives or dies. Me and nobody else."

Daul stopped abruptly, one of the black suited security guards had frozen in front of them listening to his communicator. The Alliance guard nodded turned to Jak and spoke in measured tones. The auto-savant nodded politely and turned to Daul apologetically, "Sir there's been an incident. The Captain needs to see you, immediately. If you must bring Cairn bring him but the commander wishes to see you posthaste."

"An incident with what?" Daul growled in English to the guard. The guard backed away palms raised non-threateningly, speaking in the same slow and calm English. Jak popped in, "Sir it would seem there was a brawl. It's Danzig. He's dying sir. They have him in their medical bay sir. Gazan's with him."

"Damn," Daul suddenly felt the world spinning round his head. They had Danzig in the medical bay. They were operating on Danzig. Throne of Terra. Daul groaned, "Throne of Terra they know."

Cairn's shoulders shook with mirth and Kerrigan rolled her eyes, "It was bound to happen at some point Daul. I'm more curious about exactly how Danzig went entered into his current state."

Daul nodded and gripped his sword, "You're right, as always, Kerrigan. It's time to have a conversation with the Captain."

"And if it transpires that the humans of this ship are responsible for the harm done to him?" Kerrigan asked pointedly, eyeing the guard's weapons with renewed interest.

"Then I daresay it would be our duty to return the favor," Daul felt bursts of psychic discharge cascade around his body, "Wouldn't you?"

* * *

The section of the station rented out by the Technomages was as imposing as Vir had feared. It was a place of shadows and groans, filled with the distant hum of machines and gears. The portly Centauri felt icy lances of fear pierce his belly, slowing his mind and tripping his feet. Every step into the dark corridor was a ballet with blinding terror.

"Hello?" Vir shivered as half heard whispers cackled and crowed in the echoing darkness "I am Vir Cotto, diplomatic attaché to Londo Mollari of the Centauri Republic. I am told that this is where I could find the Technomages. I'm here on behalf of Ambassador Mollari and I need to speak to someone who is in charge."

The corridor twisted and spund with the echoing crack of thunder in the distance. Vir swallowed nervously, "Obviously this would be at your earliest convenience."

The end of the corridor shone red and a great sinewy form of muscle, horns, and teeth stumbled down the corridor. It wasn't so much a man as a great gaping maw of teeth propelled by strong arms and long legs. It looked at Vir hungrily and charged.

Vir hated this, he hated his job, he hated everything about what he was doing but he would not allow himself to back down. Backing down would mean his uncle had been right all those times he reminded Vir how useless he was, "My name is Vir Cotto, diplomatic attaché to Londo Mollari of the Centuari Republic. My name is Vir Cotto, diplomatic attaché to Londo Mollari of the Centuari Republic."

He could feel the beast's steps shake the floor as it barreled towards him growling and snapping, "My name is Vir Cotto, diplomatic attaché to Londo Mollari of the Centuari Republic!"

Vir could feel its breath on his face; the tips of its long, pointed teeth as they opened around his head, and feel the warm stink of its saliva. Just as he became convinced he was definitely going to meet the great maker a bored voice in the distance said, "Stop program."

The Creature burst into flame and he was suddenly alone.

"You don't frighten easily," It was the stern faced Technomage he'd seen in the boarding area; still wearing the same angry scowl.

"I work for Ambassador Mollari," Vir smiled, "After a while, nothing bothers you."

Technomage burst into flame and appeared behind Vir, "And what does your master want with me?"

Finally the easy part, "My employer requests an audience."

"My apologies, neither I nor my brothers do private audiences," The technomage raised a penciled eyebrow, "We have nothing more to say to anyone this side of the galactic rim."

Vir rubbed his thumb and forefingers together in front of his face, "Ah but he's willing to pay."

"Money is also irrelevant," the technomage scoffed, "Where we're going it will do us no good."

Well where bribes had not functioned perhaps threats would do, "Let me put this another way. If I go back without a yes the personal consequences could be profoundly unfortunate."

The tecnomage's voice darkened, "And if you try to force us to walk where we do chose to walk the consequences will be even more unfortunate," his eyes wandered down to the breast pocket of Vir's jacket, "What is that?"

Vir looked down, settled above his family crest was a simple pin given to him by Ambassador Hilder. It was a pretty trinket but little else, though the Ambassador promised it would ward away evil spirts, the sort of jeweled nothing Ambassadors were wont to give as gifts to an ambassador's aide, "My pin?"

"Yes," said the technomage warily as he held out his hand, "You will let me see it." It was not a question.

Vir unhooked the pin and handed it over to the techonmage. The technomage tossed it into the air where it floated above his staff, bathed in a pale green light. The mage cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, "Curious, how very curious."

Vir cleared his throat, "If you don't intend to grant an audience might I at least have a name?"

"You shall have my name," grunted the Technomage, "And more, I will consent to an Audience, though not with your master. Things have changed, and a new path must be forged. I am Eldric and we have much to speak of Vir Cotto, much to speak of indeed."

* * *

"Ow" Susan winced as pain filled her leg "Come on doctor there's got to be a better way."

"Your foot is broken in three places," Dr. Franklin said patiently, "Now I can fuse the larger break but the other two are delicate bones in difficult places. If I fuse them you might lose some agility. Now I can speed up the process so they'll heal in three weeks rather than nine but it will hurt and you'll have to wear a cast."

Fantastic, just fantastic. She would be hobbling to her duties for weeks, not exactly the idea command presence. She twisted slightly in bed and agitated her leg the wrong way, "Ow!"

"I can give you something for the pain," Dr. Franklin held up a pill bottle.

"Oh great. Now you can give me something for the pain. Where were you when I was going through puberty," Susan snatched it out of the doctors hand, uncerimoniously ripping off the lid and swallowing two tablets. Franklin chuckled politely and massaged his hand.

"No," Susan's voice softened. She really did not mean to seem ungrateful, "It's ok I'll get used to it. If it gets too bad I'll just gnaw it off at the ankle." She looked over Dr. Franklin's shoulder at the broad encounter-suited figure bedecked in silk, "What's with the Imperial?"

"Dr. Gazan is learning Earth Alliance medical procedures," the Imperial bowed his head at the sound of his name, "Or at least he's trying to learn. To be honest mostly he's simply been guarding the isolation room that the wounded Imperial is in. He's quite protective of his patient even if some of his tools are archaic."

"He's a Doctor? I thought he was one of the Ambassador's bodyguards," Susan tried not to be too offended as the Imperial bent down to examine her cast and the dermal regenerator.

"Apparently he's both," Franklin shrugged.

"So," Susan eyed the closed door to the private rooms of the isolation ward, "Are you going to share with the class what they look like doctor?"

Franklin chuckled, "That would be a breach of ethics commander."

"Bah, no fun at all," she turned to the Imperial who was continuing to examine her face with wrapped attention. She grabbed him by the air tube and stared him straight in the visor, "You wanna back off a bit there buddy?"

The door to the infirmary opened and the Captain entered, still cradling his own, bandaged wrist. It seemed as though the entire command staff of the station would be injured before the day was out.

"Captain." Dr. Franklin turned around, "Are you here to have me check your wrist again?"

"What?" The Captain blinked and looked down at his wrist as though surprised to discover his own injury, "Oh right the arm, no not at the moment. I'm actually here for the Commander. Could I speak to her for a moment?"

"Sure." Dr. Franklin wandered out of earshot and over to one of his other patients, motioning the Imperial to follow.

Susan looked down at the hardening plaster, "Not exactly an auspicious beginning to my diplomatic career."

"We learn by doing and in the process we're going to fall on our face a few times," he tapped his nose amusedly, "Though I didn't expect you to take it quite that literally. So, what's your next move?"

"Other than putting the Drazi onto a ship and firing it into the sun?" Susan's voice dripped with sarcasm.

Sheridan chuckled, "Other than that yes. Uh on the other hand look you got pretty banged up here."

"No, no," Susan shook the cobwebs out of her head as the pain medication kicked in, "Getting them together to resolve their differences didn't work because they don't have any differences to resolve. Maybe I've got to come at this from another angle, maybe find an nonviolent way to structure the conflict so nobody gets hurt."

"Sounds good," Sheridan walked towards the Imperial doctor, "take care of that foot."

"Don't you want me to explain it?" Susan leaned forewords.

"I have absolute trust in your abilities." Sheridan waved politely as he walked into the distance.

"Well that's a hell of a thing to tell someone," Susan groaned and tapped her link, "No pressure. Ivanova to security, tell the Drazi we'll meet in chambers and try this again," She tried to turn her torso and collapsed back into a heap on the bed, "As soon as I can figure out how to stand up."

* * *

The carrion eaters section was an unpleasant place for an unpleasant sort of sentient. The pak'ma'ra were only one of the hundreds of corpse eaters that made their festering warrens in the dank, dark corridor in which they might slake their hunger. It was exactly the sort of place G'Kar did not want to be in, yet there he was in the middle of one of the most vile smelling warrens of charnel and disgust.

Dealing with the pak'ma'ra was one of his more unpleasant duties as an Ambassador, even though the breaking mask he could still taste the foetid air and smell the scent of decay. It was disgusting, still he was glad to be there. After the insult of having Centauri warships at their border the pak'ma'ra had become increasingly interested in incrusted connections with the Narn Empire. G'Kar believed a mutual defense treaty might even be possible.

So it was that he sat at the same table as the pak'ma'ra Ambassador's family, watching them eat and resisting the urge to cringe. It had been wise to take an agent to paralyze his gag-reflex prior to coming. He had to admit that their choice of Centauri as the main dish was oddly apt though.

He cleared his throat, "Shall we talk business Ambassador?"

One of the pak'ma'ra looked up, "We wait for him to come."

"Whom?" G'Kar moved his hand back as a bit of finger fell from the quivering tentacled jowls of the pak'ma'ra.

"The one who comes," responded another of the pak'ma'ra.

G'kar grunted frustratedly. The pak'ma'ra had no real sense of self. All pak'ma'ra were the same as all other pak'ma'ra in their eyes. Any pak'ma'ra had the right to speak on behalf of the entire race but could not actually enact anything till their entire race had a chance to consider the matter. It also meant that they found the concept of personal names and pronouns to be often unnecessary, "And who is the one who comes?"

"Him," a third pak'ma'ra pointed towards the door through which a tall slender figure with a pronounced beak was entering the room, trailed closely by two growling mastiffs. An Imperial, how curious.

The Imperial crowed and whistled heartily, "Late I come. Food bring I. Vira'Capac is ready."

The Pak'ma'ra bowed slightly, "Welcome to our table honored hunter."

"I accept your offer dishonorable scavenger. Strange to find you at the table first, " the Imperial crowed and the Pak'ma'ra chattered with laughter. Carrion eater humor, charming.

The Imperial sauntered over on his spindly legs and squatted on one of the low cushions round the table. His two hounds cuddled up behind him panting slightly and eying the table with hungry eyes. G'Kar looked up when he realized he was being spoken to, "I'm sorry my mind was elsewhere. What did you say?"

The Quills on the back of Vira'Capac's head twitched amusedly, "I said why do you not eat?"

"Why don't you?" G'Kar deflected. It wouldn't do to insult his hosts by expressing his displeasure for rotting flesh.

The Imperial howled with laughter, "Wiser than you realize you are." He spoke in a mix of broken English and incoherent whistling chirps, "And cleverer than you know I am."

"It is foolish to believe you are clever," one of the mastiffs approached G'Kar, sniffing his hand curiously, "And you haven't said why yet."

"Haven't I?" G'Kar pulled back his hand quickly as the mastiff took a snap at it and returned to its master, positively purring as the beaked sentient ran a clawed hand through the mastiff's thick mane of quills and fur.

"No, you have not," G'Kar's brow twisted in indignation, "Tell me is it all imperials who are this insufferably incoherent or is it just you? If I have this to look forward to from the Ambassador I will be very cross."

Vira'capac's quills quivered dangerously and his voice slowed. Rage quivered from every sign-song syllable, "Vira'capac is not Imperial, Vira'capac is Kroot."

"You aren't Imperial?" G'Kar knew his voice was too eager. Information on the Imperial society was scarce, to the Narn more than most. The Narn race was without telepaths so arranging meetings in advance with the Ambassador had proved difficult. What little contact he'd managed with the Ambassador had been at public functions, and the Ambassador was tight lipped as a Vorlon.

"Kroot only ruled by Kroot," He ran a blue tongue out of his beak and over his eyes, "Vira'capac follow Hilder for blood debt, nothing more."

"Ah. I see," G'Kar thought of the Narn binding blood oaths. Such things were not spoken of lightly in his society.

"The sort we do not discuss with strangers," the Kroot continued, "You ask why I do not eat? I do not eat because I did not kill. The pak'ma'ra are scavengers, they eat what is already dead. The Kroot must kill our own meat, even then we must only kill that which is a challenge."

"You are what you eat, as the humans say," the Pak'ma'ra Ambassador tore off an ear and tossed it in his mouth.

"There is truth in the humans words," the Kroot shook his head morosely, "A pity they lack the wisdom to hear it."

"I find that is often the case with all races, not exclusively the humans," G'Kar waved a gauntleted hand surreptitiously and gave a little bow, "Though they do seem to have made more of an art of ignoring their own wisdom than most."

"They talk much," Vira'capac whistled, "Listen little. Comes from too many words, they don't know how to listen, only know how to hear. Hearing is good for little beasts, food-creatures, and the stupid Krootlings who get eaten by their elders. A clever creature must listen."

"And what do you listen to Vira'capac?" G'Quan had once said something very similar to what the Kroot had said, though with admittedly fewer references to cannibalism.

"Noise, change, wisdom, and nothing," The Kroot preened his two mastiffs, running through their quills and fur with his long talons and picking out the bugs and dirt, "I hear what I already know and what I seek to learn. I heart the voices of my brood urging me to be worthy of them. I hear the deeds still that must be done and those I must never do. I hear what is important," he rubbed the throat of his mastiffs and the two dogs trilled placidly. He quirked his head to the side, eying G'Kar with a single slatted eye, "And you fellow hunter what do you hear?"

"Nothing so grand as you Vira'capac," G'Kar smiled, "Just the chewing of the pak'ma'ra and the sounds of your voice, though I know there is more to hear that I do not think to listen for."

"That is good," the Kroot spun his head the other way looking at G'Kar with his other eye. A thick mass of scar ran from the socket of the eye down the length of the kroot's beak giving him a distinctly brutal visage, "You listen to the here and now. Though I see in you voices of the past still speaking to you."

G'Kar sighed, "There are still voices I carry with me. Angry voices who cry out for blood and justice. They are the voices of my family, my pouch brothers, and my people. I am bound by blood to see that they no longer cry for vengeance."

Vira'capac shook his head sadly, "You hear but you do not listen."

G'Kar laughed, "Perhaps we will go hunting together someday. I hear there is great game on the Abbai home world. Great creatures the size of transports on the southern island."

"I suspect that when we hunt together Narn it will be for prey wearing silk and jewels not claws and fur." He waved to the half eaten Centauri on the table and crowed with laugher again.

G'Kar smiled back cheerily at Vira'capac. Perhaps G'Kar could come to like carrion eater humor after all.

* * *

The Apothecary was surprisingly well mantianed and obviously well run. It still had the rows of herbs, potions, and charms that the elderly were so fond of but behind those were more modern shelves full of various modern medicines in glass vials and syringes. Had the Doctor Faest not pointed him in the correct direction he would never have even begun to suspect the establishement of anything other than grossly overpriced essence of mirk-root.

"I really must protest this treatment," gruted Cha'wu Xian the surly Medicus who ran the Apothecary as the security team rooted through his shelves and papers, "You will damange my medicines and harm my preparations."

"Just as well you have no choice in the matter," droned the monotone voice of Iino. The Ensigneer was plugged into a data-socket in the wall, searching the shop's records.

"This is sovereign territory of the Alchemist's Guild," the Medicus ignored the angrily waving servo arm, "I will not be bullied in my own shop. Leave now, I'll go so far as to summon Chief Anoosheh Osma if I have to."

"I think you'll find," Grunted Osma, "That I've already been summoned, though I take heart that you know me by reputation even if you don't know me by sight."

The Medicus took a step back and steadied himself against a shelf. He turned to his young apprentice, "Boy, get the other apprenctices and lock yourselves in the cellar."

"Sir," said a scared young boy of seven.

"Just do it boy," the Medicus struck the boy about the head strong enough to make him bleed, "Now."

"It is unwise to mishandle the boy in front of me," Osma's voice darkened, "I do not like such action."

"What will you do? Shoot me twice for treason?" The Medicus sat on the floor in a sullen heap, tears rolling down the side of his face.

"You do not protest it then," Iino did not even bother to look up from the data-pad, "You killed two of my brother priests to poison the Inquisitor's servitor."

The Medicus barked with laughter as two security guards lifted him and clapped him in irons, "Ha, would that I had strength enough in my limbs to kill two machine men. Age and your trusted Inqusitor's interrogations robbed me of my ability to do more than provide supplies to the Amon Sui." Ah, that made more sense. He wouldn't be the first to join the Amon Sui to avenge themselves for Inquisitorial interrogation.

Osma nodded to his men to hold the Medicus tightly by the arms. The security chief bent forwards and slapped the Medicus soundly across the face, stinging his fingers and breaking the skin of the Medicus' cheek, "I find your joy unbecoming of your captivity."

"We tracked you down easily enough," droned Iino, "We will find the other traitors soon enough."

"Traitors? You have the stones to call me a traitor? The _Endless Bounty _was in Amon Sui service for generators," his eyes glowed with pride, "We were part of something greater than we were alone. Now we are simply a pale shadow drifting into nothing."

The words stung, not because of the hatred behind them but because of how true he'd once believed them to be. The _Endless Bounty_ was a proud ship of the Amon Fleet. It was not the biggest or the grandest but it was part of something bigger and grander that made up for those inadequacies. However it had been the Amon who'd tried to sacrifice the bounty, not the other way round.

Unfortunately the crew believed only some of the truth but all of the rumor, especially that rumor that contradicted truth.

"Were it not necessary that you be able to speak I would glady cut the tongue from your lips," grunted Osma as he clutched the dagger at his side reflexively. Rubbing the pommel of the dagger calmed his nerves and allowed him to control his anger.

"I do not believe I will consent to that. Being interrogated once by the Inquistion was more than sufficient for ten lifetimes," he smiled widely and green foam started to spill from his lips, "So I say to you, farewell."

Osma swore and looked around the shelves for an anti-venom. Fumbling through the glass vials. There had to be one somewhere, there just had to, "Iino, does the database say anything about where the anivenom is stored?"

"Second shelf in the back, right corner," Osma was running before Iino even finished speaking, "G-234." Shelves upon shelves whipped by A, then B, then C, and so on till he finally reached G. The row was as haphazard and ill labeled as any other section of the apothecary. Worse still the vials had all been moved out of place on Osma's orders in order to search for bombs.

Osma fumbled through the vials picking them up and eying the labels, "Damn, damn, damn, damn. G-145 a cure for headaches, G-333 a topical skin ointment, G-234, where are you G-234?" He fumbled aound the back of the shelf and lifted a small slivery vial, "There you are."

Osma rushed back to the Medicus and angrily smashed the antidote on the floor. He had been too late, the Medicus was long dead, "Damn, check on the boy downstairs."

Osma crouched down next to the Medicus as the five guards stormed the cellar, "Odd that he was so willing to toss away his own life."

"Odd that he was so determined to be found," Iino flipped the data pad towards Osma, "He's fully capable of creating a compound without linking it to the sort of trackable production markers we used to find him."

That was bad. That was very bad, the Amon Sui never wanted to be found and never killed themselves unless they thought they could take out a key member of the command structure. A key member of the command structure like Iino or Osma, "Throne Almighty! We need to get out of here."

Iino rushed the door and tried to force his way out only to recoil as his augmetic fingers sparked and crackled with electricity. A thin translucent field of energy, a void shield, covered the door entirely. They were trapped.

The ground beneath them heaved as a deafening boom nearly loud enough to drown out the screams of pain from the guards and the apprentices echoed from the cellar below. Fire poured into the room consuming everything in it's path. Osma chuckled hollowly as the smoke filled his lungs and the heat seared his flesh, "For the Emperor."

The last thing he felt before passing out from the smoke was a strong augmentic hand grabbing him by the shirt and the buzzing smell of ozone.

* * *

Michael had always liked the Bazaar. It was busy it was, vibrant, it was loud, and there was at least a one in three chance that the guy selling you something was not trying to screw you over. The skeezebag currently trying to sell him a Daffy Duck watch as an ancient human heirloom from the sixteen hundreds was probably not that one.

"Hey chief! How you doing?" Michael looked up from the display and turned around to the heavyset security guard behind him.

"Fine Lou, and you?" Michael stared up at the massive figure looming behind Lou.

"You know, the usual," Lou shrugged impassively, apparently oblivious to the giant behind him.

"So, uh Lou," Michael smiled, "You gonna introduce me to your friend or am I just going to have to guess?"

"Oh him," Lou looked behind him, "That's Galut. Least I think that's his name, at least he responds to it."

"I Galut," the giant rumbled in response though his interest seemed to be focused on a display of stuffed rabbits rather than Garibaldi.

"Galut?" Michael shook his head briefly, "Lou I'm not in another coma or hallucinating am I?"

"Oh right," Lou laughed, "You haven't met the Imperials yet have you?"

"Uh no Lou, I haven't," He hadn't really had the opportunity. The Imperials were nearly as secretive as the Vorlons though, apparently not as subtle as them. The giant wandered over to the plush rabbits and started poking them and giggling, "They're, uh, bigger than I expected." The man's arms were as thick around as Michael's torso.

"Galut is bigger than most of them but he's a real softie. After the Drazi brawl he got separated from the other Imperials and started wandering the station. I found him in the garden crying because he was lost and scared," Lou smiled and rubbed his hand through what was left of his hair.

"The guy's the size of an average planet and he was scared?" Michael watched as Galut negotiated with the shopkeep with a credit chip one hand and a massively oversized rabbit in the other. The shopkeeper seemed to be fighting the urge to run.

"He doesn't like being alone," Lou shrugged, "Near as I can tell he was worried he'd been fired because he couldn't protect his friends in the Drazi brawl. Wasn't sure if they'd let him come home."

"Will they?" Michael said with trepidation.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Lou bit his lip, "The Imperial that got hurt, Danzig, was cut up real bad. He was bleeding all over the place. Worse still it was the hunchback Imperial that did it. Dorn or something like that. Mean son of a bitch that one, we've got him in lockdown but we've had to sedate him even in isolation to stop him from trying to cut his way through the door with those flails grafted onto his hands."

"What grafted onto where?" Michael rubbed his own knuckles reflexively, checking that they were still there.

"Chief have you not been watching ISN at all since you woke up?" Lou laughed grudgingly.

"I've been catching up, so sue me," Michael had been keeping up with the news but he was still a few months behind. He'd seen some images of the imperials but ISN and Earth Today were more prone to show pictures of the golden skull of the ambassador or the great prow of the_ Endless Bounty. T_hough that probably had more to do with the EA's intentional censorship of the Imperials, "Just pretend like I've been in a coma or something."

Lou smiled, "sorry Chief, I'm just not used to the idea of you not being in the loop before I am, ya know?"

Michael sighed, "Yeah I know Lou, just tell me."

"Not much to say, the Imperials got a thing for not wasting bodies. You die and your corpse gets done up with more tech than a battleship and the use it to haul around cargo or work as a bodyguard. It's creepy as anything I've ever seen Chief," Lou stopped for a second, "There are rumors that the people they do it to aren't dead when it gets done to them. Like it's a prison term only for life. Sorta like the death of personality only you're supposed to remember why it was done to you."

"Yeesh," Michael whistled, "That's Old Testament alright. Can't say as I like the idea of that."

"I hear that," Lou paused nervously, "Me and the rest of the guys we were wondering, when you gonna come back on duty?" He laughed nervously and rubbed his hands together, "Look, we bought ya a cake alright? It's been sitting there for two days now."

Garibaldi stops, "Are you kidding me? You passed up a cake for two days?" He grabbed Lou by the collar and said in a tone of mock serious, "What have you done with the real Lou Welch huh?" He shook by the shoulders, "Hey security! Security over here we've got another guy in a changeling net."

Lou laughed and shook him off, "Seriously Chief, when you coming back? Everybody misses you, just you know it aint' been the same without ya'."

"Soon, real soon now." Michael said as much to convince himself as Lou but was saved from further discussion when Lou's comm. chirped a warning about a Drazi fight on station.

Lou looked nervously at Galut; the giant was wandering over with his massively oversized stuffed rabbit. " look I gotta go, catch you later?"

"Yeah," Michael smiled, " No problem."

"I hate to ask a favor, seeing as how you're taking it easy and all but could you take Galut? I don't want to drag the poor guy to another brawl," Lou looked down at his watch.

"I got it Lou don't worry," he waved Lou off, "Its under control."

Lou ran off leaving Michael alone with the giant and his stuffed rabbit, "So... you're Galut?"

Galut grunted.

"How much did you pay for the rabbit?"

Galut raised five fingers.

"Five credits?" He stared at the massive felt rabbit, "Not a bad deal. I'm surprised, the traders here can be real slime sometimes."

Galut hugged the rabbit tighter, "Good price is when trader not smiling. Smiling trader getting too much money."

Michael laughed and slapped Galut as high on the shoulder as he could reach, "I think you and I are going to get along swimmingly," a twisted thought popped into his head, "How would you like to see my second favorite thing in the world?"

* * *

Vir did not want to be in the small room with the thirteen robed figures but couldn't think of a polite way to excuse himself from the center of the circle. So he sat in the uncomfortable iron chair as the thirteen of them chanted and chattered in arcane words beyond his understanding. The techonmages were a bizarre collection of peoples to be sure. There were at least half a dozen different sentient species in the room, at least one of whom he was convinced was from a supposedly extinct species. He could not help but feel small and childish with his legs dangling above the ground as he sat in the two sizes too large seat.

Eldric slammed his staff on the ground with a resounding crack, small sparks of light and energy blistering into the air, "It is decided."

"What is decided exactly," Vir shifted and squirmed on the chair and mopped his brow, "I could come back later if you need me to, I mean there's no need to be hasty."

Eldric simply stared at him with glassy dead eyes that seemed to bore into Vir's own head. Vir squirmed, "Or now... now is good too. I like now. I live in now. I'm rambing incoherently aren't I."

Eldric nodded politely, "You are a kind soul in a universe that is cruel Vir Cotto. Under different circumstances I believe your kindness would have led you to glory and wealth beyond most men's dreams."

"I don't suppose you could give that to my Uncle in writing could you?" Vir blushed even as the words came from his lips.

"I suspect you'll want me to devote my energies to more important matters Mr. Vir Cotto. But then, you would have no way to understand the importance of what you do not understand," the thirteen technomages chuckled eerily. Throaty and dark laughter echoed with unspoken power.

"I'm sorry I seem to be confused. It's not you specifically, I usually am just confused. I mean, life is confusing after all. We know some things and not others for no real reason. What we do know often doesn't matter and what we don't know often does matter. But we can't know what does matter and what doesn't matter until it's to late for it to matter," Vir floundered, his face heating up with embarrassment.

Eldric opened his arms wide and motioned to the thirteen technomages, "You are here Mr. Cotto, because you are supposed to be here. Because you need to be here," he raised a hand as Vir opened his mouth to talk, "I know you do not want to be here. Only fools and those with no choice in the matter seek to defy my order's wishes for privacy. But here you are. Seeing as how the universe has dropped you into my lap Mr. Cotto it stands to reason the universe has a plan for you."

One of the other technomages, a lean minbari with an eyepatch croaked with a dry and cracked voice, "There are two paths that lie in front of us where once there was one. Endings and beginnings beyond what we expected. We have seen the path for thousands of years and now we know not to where it will lead."

A barrel chested centauri slurped on his own words, "Right decisions lead to wrong just as surely as wrong decisions lead to right, it is to the end we must consider not the begning or the middle."

Eldric nodded and waved his staff above Vir's head, "War comes soon, terrible war. A worse conflict than that which we ever imagined. Old enemies walk the universe greater and terrible than you know of even in legend. Death itself will take to the starts." Bright runes burst into the air and swirled about the circle coalescing into images of skulls and death. Morbid tableaus of societies burning and worlds crumbling to ash.

"We have seen it," wailed a female human, "It wil come." She fell to her knees and broke down into sobs, her staff cracking on the ground.

"It will come," echoed the thirteen as they helped her back to her feet. She stood drunkenly with the support of another technomage, her body swaying with silent tears.

Eldric stared Vir in the eyes, "It will come and you must listen and learn."

Vir stood up from the chair and started edging towards the door. These mages were completely insane, "I'll do my best to help with that."

"I did not give you permission to leave Mr. Cotto," cracked the voice of Eldric. He waved his staff and Vir felt a strong tug to his navel. The Centauri crashed to the ground and was heaved by an invisible force back to the chair, "We will finish our conversation before you leave."

"People know where I am," Vir struggled against the invisible force, panic coloring his voice, "The Ambassador will send people to find me."

"I don't doubt that," Eldric calmly leaned on his staff staring Vir in the eyes, "But not for a couple hours at least, more than enough time for us to finish what needs to be finished," his voice softened somewhat, "I am sorry that I must be so cruel. You do not deserve my cruelty but you require my council. You must be warned of what comes. Of what you must do."

"Why me?" Vir gave up struggling and sat slack in the chair, "Why are you determined to use me?"

"Not you specifically Mr. Cotto, but we are going to put you on a path that will offer you many opportunities for power and glory," Eldric smiled, "Which makes you perfect."

"But I don't wan't those things," whined Vir piteously.

"A man who is greedy, or selfish, or foolish, or weak might take those opportunities and lead us to ruin," Eldric reached out and tapped Vir's hearts, "You mistake the callousness of your master for strength when his true strength, and yours, comes from in here. Now you will listen to my advice and go. Do you understand?"

Vir nodded, eager to be free of the circle of thirteen, "Yes, of course I do."

"Of course you do," Eldric said in a voice of dispassionate amusement, "Or at least you think you do, which will do for now. Heed my words Centauri, for I will say them once and once only. Dark days are coming from which cannot be avoided. The battle between light and shadow will soon become irrelevant. The hasty decisions of your Master may prove more useful than foolish in the days to come, much as it pains me to admit it. The old Alliances and old hatreds do not matter. Do not seek the path to eternity, for she is treacherous and untrustworthy. Help the man with the pierced hand find peace else vengeance will consume all else. Kill the one who betrays the stars for he is an abomination. Do this and you will survive, fail in this and all things that you love will wither and die."

Vir flinched as Eldric reached into Vir's breast pocket and slid something heavy into it. The sharp edges pressed uncomfortably against his chest, "This is not an endorsement for what your master plans. Yes child I know what lies in Londo's heart, I know him better than he knows himself," he brushed at a bit of lint on Vir's shoulder, "But that is neither here nor there. You will go back to him and give him the data crystal I have placed in your pocket. That is for him, and him alone. There is also another item that may one day save your life. That is for you and you alone."

He leaned in close to Vir and glared, his hot breath painfully close to Vir's eyes, "Do not waste my gift and do not let anyone know of my gift to you till the moment is right and you have no other choice. Anything else would be unwise."

He waved his hand and Vir felt the force holding him down slacken, "Get away Mr. Cotto. Leave this place and never return. I pray we never meet again."

Vir ran away as fast as he could, forcing his legs to work as he'd never done before. His body ached from the pressure that held him down and his head tingled slightly from runes floating in the air but he wouldn't allow himself to spend a second more in that terrible place. Glimpses of rooms with arcane machines and wondrous images flashed past his view as he fled the corridor but the only wondrous thing he cared to see was the exit to red sector.

He ran out the door so fast that he tripped over his own feet and tumbled down a flight of stairs, landing in a heap on top of himself. He groaned in pain and tried to stand up, twisting and falling drunkenly on his tired legs. A strong hand reached out and grabbed him as he overbalanced for the second time.

"It would be wise for you to slow yourself somewhat Mr. Cotto," spoke a calm and even voice, "Else you might do yourself serious harm. I would regret to see that happen."

"I'm okay," blustered Vir, "Really I'm," he stumbled and nearly fell again, "Let's just find me a chair alright." He looked up at the stoic face of Lennier, "Thank you Lennier."

"It is alright Mr. Cotto," Lennier helped him hobble over to a bench, setting him down gracefully to collapse on it, "I will get some water for you while you compose yourself."

As Lennier wandered off to get water Vir reached into his pocket and pulled out the black silk pouch shoved into his breast pocket. The silk shimmered and disappeared as he poured the contents out into his hand. The first object he recognized readily enough, a common data crystal, but the second object, the object Eldric had instructed him to keep secret and safe, was utterly alien to him. It was a necklace made from angular and jagged strips of bone set in gold from which hung a sling clear stone the size of his thumb. The stone carved visage of a leering toadish face was stretched and mocking, almost laughing at Vir's confusion and disarray.

He tossed it into his bag and rubbed the crystal around between his fingers, staring up at the blank space of wall where the door to the technomage's apartments had once been, "Londo had better find what he wants on this crystal. Dealing with technomages once is enough for a lifetime."

* * *

Senator Hidoshi cracked his neck and shifted in his chair to try and improve circulation to his legs. The meeting had been going on for a good three hours longer than they'd expected and it was already a six hour long meeting. This was not to say that he didn't want to be there, far from it. As the Babylon 5 liaison to the Senate it was his job and his privelage to be represeting the station for the exploratory comittee, expecially for such an interesting subject. He wondered if this was how the men discussion their options after first contact with the Centauri felt, excited and confused about what comes next.

It was an advanced civilization, utterly alien and unknown to all races. Even the Vorlons supposedly knew little to nothing about them and they chose to make first contact with the known worlds on a Earth Alliance station. He just wished the Senators who kept entering the room late would stop asking the same questions over and over again.

"The implications of this are very exciting gentlemen," Senator Joyce smiled as he poured himself another cup of coffee, his rich irish accent coloring every word, "I'll be damned if I can't help but get a bit giddy about it all."

"Nobody blames you Connor," Senator Gomez said through a mouthful of half eaten danish. He swallowed wrong and coughed, "Excuse me. That is to say we're all very excited about what this could mean for the future."

"Lets not be too hasty," droned the sour voice of Senator Lechner, "Let's not get our hopes up about these people. We know next to nothing about them. Who's to say this Empire won't invade us the first chance they get."

Hidoshi rolled his eyes. One could always count on Clark's partisans to draw their own `earth first` prejudices into the debate, "Give it a rest Lechner. So far their only military actions we've seen have been defending an Earthforce station against a Minbari terrorist assault."

"Defending their only port of call for supplies you mean," whispered the smooth voice of Senator Martin as she tapped her pen nervously on her teeth, "Everything they've done so far could just as easily be self preservation as it is altruism."

"So what? The ship with vastly superior weapons and armaments decided to defend a neutral station from attack by the Minbari for fun? You've seen the battle footage the same as I did, they cut through the Trigati like it was paper," Senator Franken waved a printout of the battle in front of Senator Lechner's face.

"They defeated a ship with its ECM turned off," Countered a red faced Senator Lechner, "They practically kill themselves."

"Did they? Or did they disable the Minbari ECM remotely?" Senator Franken said knowingly as he tapped the frame of his glasses, "There were some interesting exotic particles that ship put out when it came out of hyperspace. Who's to say they didn't do something to the Trigati?"

"An interesting theory," Hidoshi looked down at his own report of the battle, "But at the moment it is little more than idle speculation. As are almost all theories we have on the Imperials. We know they are trading large quantities of something with the Centauri in their diplomatic hanger but other than running weapons signature scans on the cargo our trade agreements prevent us from knowing much about the specifics of what they're trading. We do know they've approached some governments about the prices of water, foodstuffs, and basic trade materials so we speculate they're trying to get a sense for the actual market value of goods in the sector."

"There is another matter that needs to be discussed gentlemen," Hidoshi admitted diffidently, "We still haven't made any decision as to our protocol in dealing with the Imperial telepaths."

"Damned unnerving that they'd send a telepathic Ambassador as their first contact. Damned unnerving and that's to be sure," Senator Gomez chewed his lip, "¿Pero qué sé yo? It seems that their society is much more comfortable with telepaths than ours is. I must confess the idea of using telepathic communications in place of Tachyons hadn't even popped into my head as a possibility."

"Because so far as the Psi Corps was concerned it was science fiction. To be honest I'm still not convinced it isn't." Agent Thomas was the Psi Corps representative at the meeting. As far as Psi Corps officers went he was positively congenial, "If the reports are to be believed the Ambassador is a telepath and a telekinetic but the reports so far have been mostly speculative. We do know for a fact that they have some technology, possibly psychic technology, which allows the Captain of their ship to be in two places at once through the use of a "meat puppet."

"A meat puppet?" Senator Franken said with incredulity.

"It's the closest thing the translation computer could get to the actual word sir. I'm sure it's more impressive in it's mother tongue," Agent Thomas pulled a stack of photos from a folder and started passing them around, "I apologize in advance for the graphic nature of these. It would seem that the Imperials have a mismatches sense of modesty."

One of the Generals whistled as he got a copy of the photo, "But a damned great taste in women. This is the meat puppet?"

"So it would seem. Near as we can tell it's an animated human corpse that gets operated remotely by the captain," The agent grinned embarrassedly, "Apparently he seems to believe that human representatives are easier to deal with when they're properly distracted."

"I'm almost afraid to ask but where did they get the corpse?" Senator Joyce pushed his coffee away. Apparently he'd lost his appetite. Hidoshi couldn't blame him.

"It's not beyond belief that they'd have the technology to clone a human body," Hidoshi said tentatively.

"Nor is it beyond belief that they killed and vivisected an Earth Alliance explorer at some point Senator Hidoshi," Senator Lechner countered bluntly, "At this point we simply don't know one way or the other."

"I hope this doesn't go south on us," groaned Senator Gomez, "The last thing we need is to antagonize a race that ISN has got the voters to believe is the next Vorlon Empire."

"They might be right," Hidoshi flipped his report to the most recent report by Susan Ivanova. He adjusted his glasses and scanned for the relevant passage, "Ah here it is. _I'm deeply unnerved by the implications of some things the Ambassador has said about the size of his Empire. The Centauri Ambassador was, in a moment of bravado, prompted to brag about the size of the Centauri Republic at its height of power. Ambassador Hilder stared back impassively as the ambassador listed off the hundred worlds and races conquered by the great general Vanthora Advance over a period of ten years, famous for the conquer of Narn among other worlds. _

_The Ambassador found his story to be hilariously funny when it was translated, responded years if the Empire had ever had any generals incompetent enough to take ten years to conquer a hundred worlds he would be mocked at parties for generations in the Empire as well. The Centauri Ambassador decided not to finish his story." _

"Ten years to conquer a hundred worlds is worthy of scorn?" General Lefcourt said in an unreadable voice of calm. The trio of Generals in the corner had, as of yet, elected mostly to sit in silence.

"I suspect he was simply sick of the Centauri's drunken bravado," Senator Joyce said between sips of coffee, "Still it wouldn't be unwise to start drawing up tactical plans to fight off the Imperials just in case."

"First good idea you've had all day," chuckled Senator Lechner looking to the Generals, "How many tactical assets do we have in the space surrounding Babylon 5 at the moment?"

As the meeting continued and the Generals continued to give increasingly confident predictions for ways in which the Imperial vessel could be captured or destroyed Senator Hidoshi could not help but feel a slight sensation of dread in the pit of his stomach. Was the human race so eager to start another war so soon after nearly loosing the last one?

* * *

Standing in Command and Control was agonizing. Even with the pain medication and the crutches the broken bones in her foot protested every second motion with a shooting stab of throbbing pain. The command staff was scurrying around her doing everything in their power not to make eye contact with her.

She had not, however, gotten to be the Commander of the most important diplomatic station in the known universe by standing down from a challenge. As a soldier, especially as a woman, Susan felt obligated to muscle her way past the pain and do her job. She could not afford to ever show a sign of womanly weakness, not even for a broken limb. The second she started letting someone treat her like a delicate flower and not a soldier was the day she would stop being able to function in a command position.

So it was that she stood on duty, wincing in pain as she watched the duty clock slowly tick towards her scheduled meeting with the Drazi when she would finally, blissfully, be able to sit down and take the weight off her injured foot. It almost made her look forward to the negotiations with the Drazi.

"Commander Ivanova I just thought you should know we just got a message from the Drazi home world," Lt. Corwin wandered over carrying a data pad and wearing a look of concern. Perhaps she'd spoken too soon. There was always something else, damn.

"Make my day and say this stupid fighting is over with," Susan said hopefully as she chewed another pain tablet. She'd spent most of the day in either agony or woozy incoherence, neither of which made for a particularly effective officer. Still she couldn't let this Drazi situation beat her.

"Just the opposite. The Greens have upped the ante, they've started killing Purples not just wounding them," Lt. Corwin flinched a bit at the spiteful look that she shot at him. There was no need for that, honestly. It wasn't him that she wanted to hit. He was just the closest to her.

"Have the local Drazi heard about this yet?" Susan's blood ran cold. The scheduled meeting was only in a matter of minutes.

Lt. Corwin shook his head, "I don't know."

"I need a full tactical squad and I need it now!" Susan hobbled painfully towards the lift, tapping her communicator as she went.

"On the way," replied the voice of Lou.

Susan entered the transport tube knowing all too well that once she got to the conference room she would discover a slaughter. It was all decidedly Russian.

* * *

The popcorn in the bowl smelled gloriously of butter and hot sauce as he flopped down on the sagging couch, setting next to the giant of a man. He smiled and pressed the play button, glad to finally have someone else who appreciated the theatrical genius of 20th century cartoons.

Galut sat on his couch staring at the vid screen with near religious reverence, clapping his dinner plate sized hands together with readily apparent glee. His oversized plush rabbit, now named Bugs, or rather "Ba-ga-za" the closest approximation to Bugs Galut could manage, was clutched to Galut's chest and already looked in danger of splitting at the seams.

The two of them had been watching Looney Tunes for the better part of two hours now without stop, and it seemed as though Galut wouldn't ever willingly stop. The alien showed a sort of childlike glee and wonder that Michel envied, the immature simplicity that allowed someone to watch cartoons and treat them as reality.

It was bizarrely reassuring to deal with the alien. There was no lying to him. Galut was what Galut was without space for guile or deception. For the first time in weeks Michael didn't feel like he needed to watch his back.

"Want some popcorn?" He offered the bowl to the giant.

Galut shook his head and pointed to his helmet, "Can't eat."

"Sorry," Michael blushed, "I forgot."

"It is ok," grumbled Galut, "I forget things also. People tell important ones twice, no worry."

Michael laughed, "I guess so."

Galut nodded and watched the television, shaking his rabbit to make it look like it was talking in time with Bugs Bunny. An overripe melon that Galut had stuffed into a pouch at his side, god only knew why, was standing in for the role of Elmer Fudd. It dripped slightly as Galut shook. Apparently this added to the fun.

"Can I ask a question Galut?" Michael said as he tossed a newspaper down on the ground under Galut's feet to catch the melon drippings.

"You just did." Galut slapped the melon and the rabbit together, making them kiss.

"Why are you here?"

"To watch rabbit." Galut pointed to the screen with the stuffed animal, melon bits dripping off its face.

"No," Michael shook his head and ate a handful of popcorn, "I mean why are the Imperials here, on Babylon 5. Why are you here?"

Galut considered the matter for a few seconds then grumbled, looking to the door, "Where should Galut be?"

"You're welcome to be here Galut," Michael backpedaled, "I didn't mean you had to leave. I just wanted to know why your ship was here? Why is Ambassador Hilder here?"

Galut cocked his head and grunted, "Galut not know."

"They don't tell you?"

"Oh they tell," Galut said somewhat embarrassedly, "I forget things. My job protecting. Where going is other job."

"It's ok," Michael smiled, "My job was protecting people as well."

"Why was? Why no is?" Galut returned the half mashed melon into a pouch of what look suspiciously like more mangled and misused foodstuffs.

"It's difficult to explain Galut," Michael took a sip of cola, "I got hurt trying to protect someone important. Someone I trusted and liked hurt me and killed the man I was trying to protect. He nearly killed me, shot me in the back."

Galut grunted with incomprehension, "You willing to die if he could live?"

"I… I think I much rather would have caught them all and not been hurt," Michael sighed, "Caught them before they could do anything. I don't want to die but I'm willing to do it if I can help people."

Galut shook his head and smacked Michael in a convivial way that still knocked him a bit silly, "Then why say "was job" is not "was job" is an "is job" silly man. You like protecting so you protecting man. One mistake not ends that."

Michael shook his head ate another handful of popcorn, "It might well be Galut. It might well be."

* * *

Bonafila was a pale shadow of herself, nothing but stretched skin and bone kept alive by the mess of cables and tubes leading into her body. It was a miracle that she was alive at all but the Enzo were a hearty breed born of Amon stock, though few proud people of Amon stock admitted so after the late unpleasantness.

David stared at her and wondered again if he would ever be able to hold her in his arms or to hear her voice. She was a thing of wonder and beauty beyond his wildest dreams. He knew that as a bastard child of Sáclair he'd never be able to wed her, Donat would never consent to marring of his heir to a bastard, but that did not stop him from loving her.

It was strange how freak accidents of birth could affect things one way or another. He would never be able to inherit the ship, nor would any of his living brothers because they were born of the wrong mother. Likewise his sisters born of the right mother would never be able to inherit the ship, as the Emperor had not seen fit to make them of the proper sex. It would be the unborn prince that slept within the Lady Sáclair's womb who would inherit the keys to the ship and glory eternal.

David took no issue with that. He did not want glory eternal. He wanted Bonafila. Worse still, she wanted him. It would have made things so much easier had she simply spurned his advances as her father would have wished but for his handsome face and his kind manner she had loved him in return.

It seemed death would resolve the issue to everyone's satisfaction, Mr. Enzo was no doubt grateful to be spared the shame of his daughter loving a bastard. The man might intentionally let his daughter die just to spite him.

Every day David would sit at Bonafila's side, brooding, praying, and weeping. He left her side as little as is possible, though the Medicus had made it abundantly clear that he was never to be at her side when the girl's mother or father were visiting her.

His hand strayed to a golden lock of hair and he felt a lump in his throat, "Damn it Bon, why'd you have to go and do a damn fool thing like that? Shoving me out of the way like that? It should be me on this bed not you! I'm strong one remember? I'd be up and kicking in no time, never mind the bulkhead," his voice choked up, "And if I wasn't then losing me is a lot less important to the world than losing you. I know the Emperor must want a pretty girl like you up with him to keep him company at the Golden Throne but he can't have you yet. You aren't his to have, not yet anyway, not till you're old and have a whole mess of grandchildren."

He kissed her forehead, "So wake up soon. Please Bon, wake up soon."

"It's always a shame to see those we love injured," David jumped at the unexpected voice. He hadn't realized anyone else was in the room. He turned and saw a plump noble wearing flowing silks and a great fur cloak. The plump noble grinned unabashed, "Sorry lad, I hadn't meant to frighten you. I was just visiting one of my own."

David nodded politely, "No harm done. I'm just not used to other people being in this section of the med-bay."

"Aye," nodded the noble, "Not much surprised by that. Faest has been making an extra effort to make sure that you're not in here at the same time as anyone else. Suppose Donat doesn't want it known that you're kissing his sleeping beauty."

"Now see here," Started an affronted David, "What business is it of yours?"

"Calm yourself lad," laughed the noble, "Enzo can stuff it for all I care. So can all those imbecilic blood purists who go on about 'keeping the lines untainted' and the like. Near as I can tell being noble or a bastard hasn't got a damn thing to do with your parents being married or not."

David was unsure what to say to that. The court of Sáclair rarely acknowledged that he was a bastard openly; it was too impolite for conversation behind closed doors let alone to one's face. Yet David found the noble's words to be comforting.

He put a hand on David's shoulder, "Don't you worry about old Dex telling on you. Old Dex has got more secrets of his own that he'd prefer to keep than you lad. She's a pretty thing, I'd be more worried about you if you weren't in love with the girl."

"I'm not in love with her," David started lamely.

"Not much of a liar are you boy?" Dex chortled, "Or not willing to lie about this? Either way it doesn't matter to me, I'm here on other business."

"What business is that?" David floundered.

"The kind that aint' none of yours," Dex shook his head, "Honestly boy I'm sneaking into the med-lab at a time when only the disgraced bastards are in here visiting their unconscious love, do you think I'm doing something what I'm supposed to be doing?"

"I rather confess I'd assumed you were just another visitor," David shook his head trying to make sense of what was being said to him, "That is to say aren't you one?"

"After a fashion lad, I suppose I am," Dex chortled, "Though I'm not visiting a friend so much as a professional associate. You see I've got someone what I need to cure so he doesn't go and blab about some embarrassing things. I could kill him, that'd certainly do the job but I prefer to keep my mates alive rather than kill them. A man's more useful alive than dead eh?"

"Kill him?" David's eyes widened and realized he'd left both his pistol and saber at the security check-in, "Why would you kill your friend?"

"Because we're Amon Sui saboteurs of course," Dex said glibly, "He knows my face and could lead back to our operation."

"You're being awfully open about it. What's to stop me from just going and blabbing to security," David watched as Dex sauntered over to a comatose man and injected something into the man's arm, "You… you aren't going to kill me are you?" David's eyes wandered over to the doors to the med-bay. A light flashed indicating they'd been magnetically sealed.

"Kill you?" Dex laughed, "Lad we're about to become the best of friends," He turned to the comatose man, "Oy pisshead! Wake up."

The comatose man groaned and opened his eyes groggily, "What happened?"

"You decided to take a three week long nap after taking a blow to the head," Dex grunted, "Now get up out of bed before I decide it's more than it's worth to keep you alive and awake."

David blinked in astonishment, "What was that? How did you do that?"

"Lad the problem with Faest's methods is that there's some techniques he aint' willing to use. There are methods of xenotech healing far beyond what he can even dream of," He looked David in the eye, "But they ain't free and they aint' legal in the strictest sense."

"Will they be able to help her?" David felt his heart thud in his throat.

"Might be," Dex helped his associate to his feet. The recently resuscitated man stumbled weakly on his legs from lack of use, grabbing tightly at Dex's cloak, "This lout's been getting treatments for weeks now. Can't say as to how long it would take to work even if it does work for her."

"But there's a chance?" David said desperately.

"Better than she's got now I'd say," Dex smiled predatorily, "So lad you willing to bargain?"

"Whatever the price is," David said breathlessly, "I'll pay it for her."

"Aye lad," Dex said sadly, "I know. And you will. You will."

He put a full syringe in David's hand, "We'll be in touch then lad. Welcome to the Amon Sui. It goes without saying of course that if ye turn on us lad the consequences will be profoundly unpleasant."

David felt a cold sinking sensation in his heart as he pocketed the syringe and watched Dex and the other man hobble out of the med-bay. Throne Almighty what had he just done? It was worth it, for her it was worth it. Anything was worth it.

As he injected the syringe into Bonafila's arm he told himself hollow promises and empty lies that the Amon would not make him do anything against his family or his father, lies that he was willing to believe just to have another second with his Bon.

* * *

"What do you mean they're gone? How can they possibly just be gone," Londo raged at his monitor in fury, "There were hundreds of Technomages on this station, each with ships, luggage, attendants and you mean to tell me that they just all went up. Poof," he waved his arms in the air, "Like magic?"

"Londo I don't know what to tell you," Vir flinched away from Londo's wildly waving arms, "They gave me a crystal to give to you then kicked me out. When I checked the station logs to figure out when they were planning on leaving I discovered that the station computers never even logged them as entering the station. Their ships aren't in any of the hangers, no fuel is missing from the station's reserves, it is as though they were never here at all."

"But they were here!" Vir stamped his foot petulantly on the ground, "I saw them. You saw them. We saw them together. I just finished having an entire conversation with the Abbai Ambassador about how odd it was to have so many technomages in a single place at once."

"I know they were here Sir," Vir tried not to thing about the circle of thirteen, "But they aren't here any more. I don't think anybody can or will stand in the way of where they want to go."

"But what do they want? Why were they here?" Vir pulled at his hair, "It's enough to drive you mad."

"They did give you the crystal sir," Vir offered, pointing to the small stone sitting on a stack of unread reports. It glinted and shone in the dim candlelight of Mollari's quarters.

"This?" Screeched Mollari as he grabbed the stone and waved it in Vir's face, "This is somebody's idea of a joke. It's a collection of myths and legends from the known worlds about the wars of the first ones. The wars of life and death, children's stories about races long dead and buried. A reminder of how even the mighty disappear into obscurity."

Mollari's lip curled and he flung the crystal contemptuously at a chair where it thudded dully on the cushion, "A cruel joke reminding me how the Centauri are doomed to descend into obscurity and nothingness like they did. Bah." Mollari swore, "I have no time for such cruelties."

"Ambassador I do not believe they would have given you this information out of spite," Vir though back to the level of gravitas that Eldric treated every word with, "I'm sure that crystal is important somehow."

"And how would you know? Is it your extensive knowledge of Technomage humor? Fine you want the damned thing," Londo wandered over to the sofa and grabbed the crystal, "Take it!"

Londo shoved the crystal into Vir's hands, "Take it and get out of here. I have no more use for you today. Do whatever it is you do when you aren't here as far away from me as you can manage.

The door slammed behind Vir, leaving him confused and alone holding the crystal. It had to be important, he didn't know why but it had to.

* * *

This was a bad idea and Susan knew it but it had taken her too long already to track down the headquarters of the Green Drazi and she had no time to wait for backup. It was now or never. The green Drazi had holed up in a disused storage locker for military goods. It wasn't a particularly livable space but it did lock from the inside. She couldn't risk them getting actual weapons into that space or it would be impossible to clear them out without bloodshed, human bloodshed.

"I want to see the leader of the Greens," Susan growled to the Drazi guarding the door. "We just had another Drazi killed."

"Natural selection," the Drazi scornfully replied as it rubbed the thick scaly plate of bone that covered its forehead. It was perversely excited at the idea of dead purple Drazi, "Do not interfere."

"I have to. I can't have this station disrupted any further. I hast to stop and it has to stop now," Susan hobbled forward trying to appeal to the it's humanity, "Look I just hobbled over from blue sector. You can at least let me talk to him."

The door opened behind the guard and the Drazi guarding it bowed and let her pass. Susan hobbled past him and tried not to trip over the raised step of the door. The uneven floor was agony to walk over.

In the middle of the wide storage room the Drazi stood in a wide circle around the Drazi leader, breathing heavily and exuding a pungent musk that Susan assumed was to mark territory. It made her nose itch badly.

"Drazi stronghold not place to humans. You not talk polite to Drazi but because you hurt by Drazi I welcome you," The green Drazi leader smiled and waved, "Rise above our differences."

"Our differences are not the issue. The issue is Drazi killing each other here and on your home world." Susan had had enough of this. It was time for it to end.

"Would you prefer we murder humans?" The Drazi leader said sarcastically. The other Drazi laughed maliciously.

"Do you want my help negotiating or not," growled Susan.

"No! We take help," the Green Drazi leader said eagerly, "I have solution to our problem."

"Go on," Susan looked around the room eying for caches of weapons or armor, anything to indicate the Green Drazi were planning an assault.

"You tell Purple Drazi to gather in Brown 29. Not used by others, will not be disturbed. Talk peace talk find solution," The Green Drazi leader was near epileptic with excitement "If you tell they trust."

"Then what," Susan blinked in surprise. That was an astoundingly reasonable sounding plan. If they could simply get together in neutral space and resolve their differences it would solve the problem, God willing.

The Drazi's face took on an unnatural look of glee, "Then when all Purple Drazi in one place, open hatch. Flush oxygen into space. Purple Drazi cannot breathe. All Purple Drazi, _all _Purple Drazi die," he smiled wickedly, "Station is quiet again. No more fighting. Green Drazi win. You win. Everybody, everybody win."

"I don't believe this! You're talking about the cold-blooded slaughter of almost two thousand Drazi," Susan screeched in horror "Don't you understand these are your own people!"

"No!" the Drazi said venomously, "Purple! Purple. You will help?"

"No," Susan shook her head and backed towards the door.

The Green Drazi leader tutted and shook his head, "Ah, great shame. We already tell Purple to come. Use your name. You will stay here till we are done."

Susan screamed, "Ivanova to security!" and reached for her link but the Drazi were too fast and her reflexes were too dulled by pain medication. One of the Drazi put a knife to her throat and she froze.

"Now we finish this, our way." The Drazi leader bent over and snagged her communicator, still smiling an evil smile.

* * *

Michael stopped abruptly to avoid colliding with the string of security guards running towards brown sector as he stepped from the transport, leaving Galut grunting and snorting in frustration behind him. The giant suffered from some form of claustrophobia and was eager to exit the transport tube as fast as was possible.

"Woah, woah, woah, Lou? What's going on? What's the commotion?" Michael said as Galut shoved past him grumbling.

"We got an uplink from Commander Ivanova. We've gotta clear out brown 29 for some big Drazi meeting." Lou looked up at Galut with a look of polite amusement as he walked away, "You still hanging round with the big guy?"

"Yeah I was just showing him some old cartoons…wait? Commander? Good for her. Good to see things are working out for someone around here." Michael grabbed Lou by the shoulder as a thought struck him, "Wait, wait, wait! Lou you said you got an uplink, not a personal message?"

"Yeah but we checked the ID on the dataflow, it came from her link," Lou said exasperatedly shaking his head.

"Yeah I know," Michael said slowly, a feeling of paranoia setting in. "I know, but did you talk to her?"

"Nah the message said she'd be offline for a while," Lou smiled clearly trying to ease Michael's conscience.

"Where did she say she'd be," Michael didn't like the sound of that. Susan was never separated from her link for more than half a second. He couldn't think of a moment where she was less than a step from it since she'd come on the station.

"Her last uplink was from brown two," Lou looked down at his watch, "I've got to go commander."

"Of course Lou," Michael waved him along, "Do what you gotta do."

Lou walked along the corridor then turned round the bend, well out of earshot. Michael looked up at Galut, "Well big guy, how do you feel about checking on a friend of mine?"

Galut stroked the head of his stuffed rabbit, "That sound fun."

* * *

Fadir hated the Navigators. It wasn't anything personal against the navigators of the bounty. He hated all Navigators. They were warp-touched creatures, unclean things. And they thought they were better than he was, _better_ for Throne's sake.

They were a necessary evil at best. At least sanctioned psychics didn't have delusions of grandeur.

Fadir and Hamman sat on either side of the door, listening to the three Navigators drone on about stars and dates and drift and about ten other blessed things Fadir didn't give a damn about. Worse still the chairs were unspeakably uncomfortable pieces made for their beauty rather than their practicality but custom dictated that the two Lionhearts guard the door while all three Navigators were in the same place at the same time to ensure they weren't assassinated.

By hour eight he was praying for an Amon Sui assassin to help liven up the tedium. Calven, Illirch, and Shemn stood in wide triangle around a holographic display of stars arguing with each other like a bunch of drowning cats.

"And I'm telling you that there are only so many of these lesser astropathic beacons gates we have to find before we can determine a pattern to how or why they're placed where they are," Calven continued for the fiftieth time or so.

"To what end Navigator Calven? To what end? We are beyond the light of the Astronomicon are we to wander aimlessly till death claims us and we are unable to wander farther," Illrich waved his bat-like sleeves and furiously blinked his eyes, "Our resources are not limitless."

"Is not our order an order of explorers? Are we not destined to discover the unknown?" Calven countered angrily, "I stand by our need to explore the surrounding area. Perhaps we ought to go as far as the Alliance homeworld."

"We'll have to rename it when we take it over," laughed Illrich, "Can't have two planets named Terra."

"The colonists who got cut off in after the Dark Age are insufferably prone to naming their planets after Holy Terra," Calven shook his head wearily, "They even named their fourth planet Mars."

"How creative of them," sighed Illirch.

"We are not of the Navigatus Nobilite Gnoscere, we are simple Navigators set to paths already set by the God Emperor's will," Shemn's reedy hollow voice countered, "To walk the path unknown without getting his consecrations and blessings is folly."

"As is to sit and accomplish nothing my brothers," Calven, "What do we have to fear that we do not already fear through inaction?"

"We are bound to follow the will of the Inquisitor," Illrich shook his head.

"Why?" Shemn started abruptly, "Why are we still bound to do so? We relied upon his protection before but as you've already said we're far beyond the reaches of the Astronomicon, neither the Amon Sui neither the Inquisition can hope to touch us here so why are we bound to obey him? He has no power over us but what we let him have."

"Silence you dog," growled Fadir before he realized his lips had moved. Hamman looked at him in horror and shock. It was customary that the two Lionheart guards remain silent. After all what could they know of the business of Navigators?

Shemn flinched as though he'd been slapped, "And you forget your place cats paw of the Inquisition. You are forbidden to speak within the sacred hall of the navigators."

"Actually you'll find the silence of the Liohearts in our hall is a matter of custom not law," Illirch said venomously, "And in this case I'm inclined give the lad pardon to speak even if it were a hanging offense," he turned to Fadir, "Boy I know you have no love for the Inquisitor so why should we obey him."

"We should obey him," Fadir said uncertain of his words, he was unaccustomed to being spoken to by such company, "We should obey him because we have given our word. Sáclair's pledge is the pledge of every man on this ship. If we dishonor a pledge given to a servant of the most holy Inquisition to aid him in seeking out Heresy and wrongness then we become the worst sort of heretics, oath breakers." He paused lamely, "And on a more practical note we've set him up as being the sole authority in negotiating with the people providing us with food and fresh water."

Calven snorted with amusement, "There is a curious wisdom to your words Lionheart. We cannot afford to bite the hand that feeds us, for now at least we are bound to the Alliance and to the Inquisitor." Something about the way that the navigator complimented Fadir made his skin crawl. He sat back down in his chair and prayed they would ignore him and that he hadn't made a new enemy of Shem.

* * *

Sáclair collapsed onto his bed next to his wife, his chest heaving and sweaty from recent exertion. The soft skin of her body nearly melted into his own. His mind, for the first time in weeks, was totally blank. Even the voices of his ancestors were silent as he simply listened to their combined ragged breath.

"I believe," Nathaniel Sáclair swallowed and shifted his weight to look his wife in the eyes, "That I should have seen to this hours ago."

"Yes," his wife said dryly, "You should have."

Sáclair quirked his eyebrow, "What? No words of love or desire eternal Anna? No comments about long lonely nights or duty coming before," he looked over her porcelain flesh, "desire?"

"You found time enough for both with your concubines light of my life. You'll find few women who find joy in anticipation when they know full well that their man is slaking his desire within another," Annabelle Sáclair playfully pinched a sensitive part of her husband's anatomy making him yelp and groan, "If you must find time for duties of desire as well, find them with me first."

"Your words are unkind," Sáclair teased, "I must ensure the survival of my crew and the wellbeing of the Inquisitor's ambassadorial mission. And I have not seen my concubines since last I shared a bed with you concurrently."

"Ah," Annabelle giggled as Sáclair tickled her sides, "You forget your other two mistresses. Your Adamanium mistress of the stars and your holy mistress of the most holy Inquisition."

"I'll grant you that her Ladyship _The Endless Bounty_ is a lover without compare," Sáclair cuddled up to his wife, "But I suspect that Hilder would prove an inept lover."

"Oh I wouldn't say that," Annabelle ground her back against him deliciously, "He is a man of fire and passion wrapped in a shell of restraint. Such men often have great passions that once released can consume you whole."

Sáclair turned her face to him and kissed her passionately, "I do not like you speaking of the passions of other men."

"Who's passions am I to speak of when I go to bed cold and alone so often," Annabelle pouted her lips and went to work with her hands, "Perhaps I should seek a concubine of my own to occupy the hours you are gone for. It would be a simple enough matter to acquire."

"I shan't worry about that too much," Sáclair laughed as he felt his blood rush to Annabelle's touch, "Five daughters is enough to keep you too occupied to consider such licentious hobbies."

"Five daughters and ten sons," Annabelle corrected crossly. She took her role as the matriarch of his family seriously. His concubines were sisters to her and his bastard children adopted with more love and care than was normally fitting of her station, "They may not inherit from you but I am as much mother to them as you are father. They are of you so they as deserving of my love as you."

"I love my bastards in my own way," Sáclair hedged awkwardly. The Emperor had graced him with the most beautiful and wonderful of women in creation but he had also cursed her with a truly curious attitude toward bastard children. The custom of the court for some thousand years before the Lady Annabelle had been to quietly hide bastard children or to induct them into the priesthood to avoid scandal. After David had been born the Lady Sáclair herself had taken the newborn babe and her mother to the great throne to announce to the entire ship that the Lord Sáclair had fathered a strong healthy boy.

It wasn't that he didn't love his bastard sons, he did after a fashion, but he could not spend as much time with them as the Lady Sáclair would prefer as well as completing his duties as Captain, "I plan to take Abbas to the Theater tomorrow."

Annabelle hand's stopped and she sat up furiously shoving the silk sheets aside with a furious wave of her elegant arm, "How can one be so divorced form ones own son's lives? Truly my love how can you?" She scowled at Sáclair her nakedness somehow enhancing her fury, "Abbas has taken up the cowl of the Omassiah some two weeks ago. Did you forget all? He travels with the Magos to the Alliance station."

Sáclair blinked nonplussed and floundered for the right words, "It is good that he has found a path in life."

"Save your platitudes husband," Annabelle spat out scornfully, "If this is the love you show to your blood that is I shudder to think how you'll treat your blood that will be."

"I will love them as much as I love you, and as much as I will love him," Sáclair reached down and rubbed his hand over Annabelle's belly, round and hale with child. His son, his first trueborn son stirred beneath her flesh.

"Now come," his wife giggled heartily as he tossed her down to the bed, "It is time to remind you how I need your touch and why you miss me when I am gone from your bed."

As flesh met flesh and the lovers truly embraced for the second time that night, Sáclair felt his mind clear of worry or care for the future. He lived for the now, let Donat worry about what came later, "Come beloved, I have centuries of experience in my head. Lets put it to use"

His wife only groaned in response.

* * *

Abbas wriggled in his robes uncomfortably as he wandered behind the Magos and Inquisitor. The pressure mask over his face was intended for a previous apprentice who'd replaced most of his lower jaw with augmentic enhancements so it pinched and puckered at odd places, rubbing uncomfortably against the skin of his face. He longed to take it off but the Magos had assured the apprentices that anyone who removed their masks prematurely would suffer her displeasure.

Much as Abbas trusted in the Mago's good nature he preferred not to risk offending her sense of propriety or her expectations of obedience. Still he could not help but feel a bit awkward and gangly by comparison to Tuul or the other apprentices. It seemed as though the other apprentices already knew and understood the roles expected of them.

He looked around at the various races and technologies of the Alliance and its allies, his eyes wide with wonder.

He'd never seen so many different xenos together in a book, let alone a marketplace. Sure, he'd met the occasional xenos dignitary on his father's ship. Once they'd even had an Eldar onboard the bounty who came to give advice to his father. But those incidents had always been isolated and controlled by Osma's security forces and his father. There was something delightfully raw and untamed about the Babylon station.

Perhaps one day he would become part of the Adeptus Biologis and study these very species. "No," Abbas whispered to himself as he stared into the crowd, "I am going to do something more worthy and adventurous with my life. One day I will wander the galaxy like mistress Kerrigan."

"Be careful what you wish for Child," said the cool voice of Inquisitor Hilder, "You just might get it."

Abbas jumped as though he'd been scalded and looked over to the other apprentices, all of who had stopped with the Magos to examine the transport tube. The security forces of the bounty stood around them wearing mixed expressions of exasperation and amusement.

"I didn't realize I'd said that out loud," Abbas said lamely. He looked to his feet, trying to avoid eye contact with the Inquisitor. He felt especially young and silly talking to the Inquisitor.

"Look up boy," Hilder chided him, "There's a good lad. Look up." Abbas looked into the terrifying skull mask and winced slightly as a small plume of energy flashed off the skull. The Inquisitor tutted, "If I needed you to say what you were thinking to know what you were thinking I wouldn't be an especially good Inquisitor now would I?"

Abbas stared back incredulously, hesitant to say what was on his mind.

The Inquisitor laughed, and turned to the Skitarii, "I've lost him it seems," he turned back to Abbas, "A life of adventure is amusing to other people but tiresome to those who live it. You're young, too young to understand. I'm not so old to have forgotten standing in Master Gaal's garden playing make believe heretics and aliens with imaginary legions of space marines behind me."

"No," Abbas shook his head, "It's nothing like that."

"Isn't it now?" The Inquisitor cocked his head to the side and shrugged, "Do you think the boy actually believes he can lie to me or do you suppose this is what passes for humor for the Sáclair clan. His father's sense of humor is warped as well.

The Skitarii's shoulders shook wildly with laughter. The Skitarii was laughing at him. The _Skitarii_ was laughing at him. Abbas blinked in consternation, "Are you mocking me Inquisitor?"

"Of course I am child," the Inquisitor chuckled, "What's the point in having near omnipotent authority if you can't laugh every once in a while. Now stop trying to understand what I'm rambling about and get on the lift with the other apprentices."

* * *

"Will you please listen to me?" Susan struggled against the thick ropes binding her wrists and tried to stay calm. The two Drazi guarding her stared impassively at her impotent flailing, "You're making a mistake of galactic proportions. Assaulting an Earth Alliance officer, attempting mass murder."

The first Drazi shook his head angrily, "Green must fight Purple, Purple must fight Green, is no other way."

"Just my luck," Susan sighed, "I get stuck with a race that speaks only in macros."

There was a slight creaking of the door opening and a scuffling of feet as someone, no two people entered past the bulkhead door. One of the Drazi snapped into action and grabbed her roughly from behind, pressing a serrated knife to her jugular and snarling, "Quiet!"

The man who walked in the room started to speak and Susan felt a rush of anticipation, it was Garibaldi. It was Garibaldi and someone else, no doubt looking for her. Garibaldi's voice echoed off the walls as he spoke rapidly, forcing his way into the Drazi stronghold, "Well howdy do sir, I'm looking for the lady of the house… assuming you're not the lady of the house. Anyway I'm here to sell you something to make you're life easier, cleaner, and all around happier," there was a sound of him tapping something out of sight, "Yes the acme handy, dandy micro-helper, right here in this box."

Michael's footsteps echoed as he took a step forward then stopped as a snarling Drazi shoved himself in front of him. He was only meters away from being able to see Susan. Just another meter, please god let him walk another meter. "If you'll just allow me to demonstrate. This will only take a moment. Well, well, well," he laughed as a Drazi snarled in his face, "I can see this is going to be a hard sell. Galut if you would be so kind as to take this."

The Drazi holding her relaxed the knife at her throat slightly as it raised its head to confusedly sniff at the air. Susan held her breath and tried not to move as the Drazi lowered the knife little by little. "Just a little more," she whispered to herself, "Just a little more."

"This is just my little way of helping so trust me ok?" Michael clapped his hands in the entryway, "Now as a matter of fact if there's anyone in here who could use some help just say the word and I'm here."

Susan shoved the Drazi with the knife away from her and yelled "Garibaldi!" as the second one dragged her bodily to the ground. The broken bones in her leg pounded with agony as his scaly hands tossed her to the ground, bruising her ribs.

She raised her head and abruptly ducked as the Drazi who had been guarding the entrance went soaring across the room. He collided with the far wall with a wet smack and lay in a heap of purplish blood, coughing wetly.

The two Drazi that had been guarding snarled and backed away as a two-meter high behemoth in a pitch black pressure suit strode into the room with a green sash in one hand and an oversized stuffed rabbit in the other. At his side stood a balding Italian-American with a silly grin on his face and a PPG in his hand.

"Ok boys I'd like to introduce you to my buddy Galut here. Say hello to the nice Drazi Galut," the giant roared angrily and the Drazi backed up looking at each other fearfully, "Yeah he's not too good with English right now but he seems to be a great judge of character. And right now he doesn't seem to like you guys too much now does he? I've got half a mind to just shoot you and the other half is rather liking the idea of letting Galut pound you into paste so sit down, shut up and get out of my way."

Susan righted herself with the help of Michael and managed to hobble towards the door with the help of the giant. Massive sausage like fingers held her around the waist in one hand, thumb and forefinger nearly touching.

The door shut behind them with a resounding clanging. Susan flinched when Michael fired his PPG at the door, activating the internal magnetic locks. Nobody would be able to enter or leave the door for at least thirty minutes without a security code. Theoretically the two Drazi wouldn't have it but theoretically they shouldn't have had access to her link ID codes either.

"We have to get to brown 29," Susan groaned leaning on the giant, "We have to get there before it's too late."

God please let it not be too late. It took twenty agonizing minutes for Galut and Michael to help Susan hobble, hop, wobble and wander brown sector. Twenty minutes that well might have been twenty minutes to many. "Come on" Susan gritted with pain as she hopped the length of the corridor and into the transport tube, "Garibaldi I need your communicator."

Garibaldi pulled it off the back of his hand and tossed it to her. She squeezed the small pentagon of metal and waited for the chime, "This is Susan Ivanova to security with a priority one alert. Lou do you read me?"

The easygoing voice of Lou crackled back over the link, "Yeah Commander I read you what's up?"

"Are the purple Drazi already in brown sector?" Susan leaned against the wall and disregarded the pain in her foot.

"Yeah commander," Lou grunted, "We got the entire area cleared out and are sitting back. The purples are all there just waiting for the greens to come on by. Just like you ordered."

"Not my orders Lou," Susan snarled, "The Green Drazi kidnapped me and used my link ID. I need you to lock the bulkhead to brown 29 from the outside and not let anyone in or out."

"Uh, for how long Commander," Lou tentatively probed.

"Lou," Michael sighed, "Just do it. I'll approve how ever much overtime we need to approve."

"Oh," Lou sounded distinctly relieved, "Well ok then. Consider it done. I guess this means you're back eh' Chief?"

"Yeah," smiled Garibaldi, "I'm back."

Susan deactivated the link, "This is only half the problem you realize. We're still going to have to confront the Green Drazi."

"Yeah," Michael nodded, "But I figure you're probably on the right track. They ought to be content just trapping their enemies in a cell for… what are you doing Galut?"

Galut had taken the stuffed rabbit and was tying something to its waist, "Bugs need sword. Galut making belt to hold it." He held Bugs up to demonstrate the green sash and Drazi knife it had been armed with.

"Careful not to cut yourself with that big guy," Michael smiled warmly and looked back at Susan's incredulous gaze, "What?"

Susan rubbed a hand over the back of her head, "I didn't hallucinate that there is a two meter tall man in a pressure suit tying a machete to the waist of a child sized pink, fluffy, stuffed rabbit standing in the lift tube did I? I mean I know I hit my head hard at least once."

"Be nice," Garibaldi laughed, "Susan Ivanova this is Galut of the Empire and his companion Bugs. Galut of the Empire and Bugs this is Susan."

"Why is he here, with you, in this elevator, with the Rabbit?" Susan pulled the bottle of pills out of a pocket and chewed on two.

"He got lost and followed me home," Garibaldi said with an expression of almost indecent sincerity.

"Garibaldi I'm tired, I'm angry, I'm wounded, and I'm Russian. If you do not stop being so unbearably annoying I will be forced to harm you bodily," Susan massaged her temples.

"You're welcome," Garibaldi said as he looked up at the current floor number, "We're here."

Hobbling away from the elevator was nearly as painful as hobbling into it but luckily there was a substantially smaller distance to be traveled. Some ten yards past the lift the Green Drazi were all traveling in a tight group, led by the head Green Drazi.

Susan headed off the group and stared down the Green Drazi leader. The bastard had the indecency to actually smile at her. After all that he'd done to her the bastard was smiling. Susan bit back an urge to beat the Drazi senseless with her shoe and spoke clearly, "It's over. This little war you've been staging is coming to an end. Now.

The Green Leader laughed, "Not over. Never over. Green fights purple. Purple fights green. It has always been this way. It will always be this way. It is fate. You fight fate."

"Perhaps," Susan sighed, "Or perhaps I have an alternate solution."

"We listen," the Drazi leader crossed his arms. The other Drazi stood behind him, flexing and hissing. Their eyes flitted around in nervous anticipation, eager to spill blood.

"The Purple Drazi are all in brown 29. So long as they're there they're immobilized, taken out of the game," Susan nodded emphatically, "This completion lasts a cycle so we'll keep them in there for the twelve days that make up a Drazi week and then let them go."

The Drazi chuckled and hissed to each other amusedly. Susan looked to Michael, "What's so funny?"

The Drazi leader cackled with laughter, "Drazi cycle not Drazi week. Drazi cycle is Drazi year. Can you keep Drazi captive that long? Can you human? No, we do this our way. We do this Drazi way. Better way."

"Can't you see this makes no sense," Susan pleaded, "You aren't fighting over anything, it's a cloth, a stupid piece of cloth."

"You do the same, yes? You fight for flag, for country?" The Drazi leader nodded emphatically, "Is same is it not?"

"Our flags actually mean something though," Susan started when she felt a massive hand gently rest on her shoulder. Galut, the imperial giant wandered forward and handed his rabbit to Susan. She grabbed it and held it in surprise.

The giant leaned in towards the Green Drazi leader, "You Green Drazi?"

"I green Drazi _leader_," hissed the Drazi furiously, "He who wear sash is green, he who wear sash of green leader is green leader."

Galut nodded and tilted his head, "You put Susan in dark place with knife people," he considered it for a moment then punched the Green leader in the face as hard as he could. The Green leader's face colored with purplish blood where his bone plate was cracked and he fell to the floor in pain, "I no like."

Galut reached down a ripped the sash off the now unconscious Drazi and tied it round his wrist, "Now Galut Green leader."

Susan opened her mouth to explain that that wasn't how it worked then realized with astonishment that the Drazi were all looking at Galut expectantly, "Wait? You mean to tell me that now that he holds the Green piece of cloth he's the green leader."

One of the green Drazi smiled nervously, "Rules of combat older than contact with other races. Do not mention aliens. Rules change caught up in committee. Not come through yet."

"Bureaucracy," Laughed Susan, "Gotta hate it."

* * *

Six people dead. There were six people dead because of weapons snuck onto his station by the Imperial Ambassador. John had ignored a couple of minor rules of station security in order to avoid faux pas in a first contact situation and he would have to answer for that to his superiors.

Hopefully he would not lose his command for this.

The time for politeness had ended. It was time to remind the Imperial Ambassador that he was a guest on an Earth Alliance military station and was, while onboard, subject to Earth Alliance law. John turned to the Babylon security officer, "Are your men in place?"

"Yes," responded the officer, "We have sixty people in full riot gear and armaments in plain view standing every meter or so in the path from the transport tube to your office."

"Good," John wandered over to his desk and sat down next to Miss Winters, "I don't want the Ambassador to be able to blink without thinking about the armed men surrounding him." The officer saluted as he brusquely strode to the line of security officers standing behind John's desk, weapons at the ready.

John picked up the data pad on his desk as he sat down, "Are you all right Miss Winters?"

"Yes, Captain I'm all right," Miss Winters shifted anxiously in her chair, brushing strands of silvery blonde hair from her face. She stared at the door and adjusted her gloves, "It's just well," she bit her lip, "Captain the Ambassador, he… well he scares me."

"Scares you Miss Winters?" John's voice cracked with astonishment. He thumbed through the report on the Drazi brawl again, reminding himself of the salient points to confront the Ambassador with.

"It's not anything he's said or done Captain," Miss Winters sighed, "It's just a feeling. With most people you can sense something to them, feelings, stray thoughts, stuff like that. There's no way of avoiding it."

"I thought you were banned from random surface reads," John quirked an eyebrow and checked to make sure she was still wearing her gloves.

"We are," Miss Winters rubbed her Psi Corps medallion reflexively, "But strong feelings, truly strong ones are impossible to cut out entirely. Even when we can't read thoughts we always can feel minds close to us and sense where they are," she brushed back her hair, "But the Ambassador is different, powerful, overwhelming. I don't trust him."

"Neither do I Miss Winters," John motioned to the armed guards, "But we can only condemn people for things they've actually done not how they make us feel. Depending on how this meeting goes you might not have to meet the Ambassador again for a while," the door chimed and John looked up, "Showtime."

He tapped his link, "Send them in."

The Imperials entered in a tight procession headed by the Ambassador, his translator and his bodyguard. A gaggle of red robed figures followed them flanked by two oversized muscular cyborgs. The red robed figures chattered excitedly to each other in a garish clicking language, evidently thrilled to be on the station.

"Magos Kerrigan I presume," John stood and offered his hand to the red robed cyborg a the head of the group. She cooed amusedly and took his outstretched hand in a long mechanical probe. John shook the tentacle apprehensively, "I wish we were meeting under better circumstances."

"Not at all," the Magos spoke in a cool, feminine, mechanical drone, "My apprentices and I are eager to visit your station as soon as possible."

"Yes," John said coldly as he activated the translation computer on his desk, "About that. There will be delays as we search your quarters and your persons for hidden armaments."

"Then this is not a friendly visit," growled the ambassador, "I cannot imagine how we warrant such hostility."

"Can't you?" John replied stonily, "I suspect you can hazard a guess." He tapped a button on his desk and a security tape of the Drazi brawl earlier in the day flickered into view on the monitor showing twisted and warped figure was attacking the crowd with long whips that spat globules of energy and ate through flesh, "I don't like when people sneak weapons onto my station."

"What activated the Dorn unit," the eyes of the Magos whirred and clicked as they zoomed to focus on the footage, "Something had to activate it's self preservation mode."

"Nothing happened to the Dorn unit," John snarled, "We've got video of that fight from thirty different angles. Nobody even touched him, he just decided to attack the Drazi of his own free will."

The imperials looked at each other in absolute horror and started gibbering to each in their native tongue. The translation computer clicked and whirred as it struggled to keep up with their rapid conversation.

"By the Throne, it cannot possibly be," The Ambassador turned to his bodyguard and translator exchanging looks of horror, "Nothing remains of the host mind."

"Tuul I need the data of Faest's findings," A tall lean cyborg handed her a data tablet. She took the tablet from his hand with a swipe of her cybernetic tentacles, "Not unless you start restoring it with powerful anti-agapic restoratives. How could I be so blind."

"Nobody blames you Magos Kerrigan," said the lean cyborg.

"Nobody asked you apprentice Tuul," growled Kerrigan in response. She looked at the Ambassador still ignoring John's increasingly confused expression, "There wasn't ever any poison injected into the servitor at all. The first entry was someone injecting the servitor with a restorative to repair the damaged parts of the arco-flagellants brain the second person was simply trying to undo the work of the first. But the second only knew enough to know that the servitor was being injected with something harmful, so he of course assumed poison not brain restorative."

"Of course," groaned the Ambassador, "It would just be a matter of waiting for the thing to become self aware or perhaps regain some of it's memories and it might well have assassinated me or Sáclair. It's a wonder the damn thing didn't attack me on Belzafest."

"I apologize for inconvenience," the Ambassador said in broken English to John, "This was assassination attempt against me. Internal matter, many apologies."

"No it is not an internal matter. Not any more," John's eyes narrowed, "People are dead on my station. People are dead because you snuck weapons onto the station and attached them to that," he faltered, searching for the right word, "psychopath onto my station. We've had to sedate him just to keep him from attacking everything in sight and doing harm to himself and others."

John slapped his hand against the table in fury, "No more secrets. No more lies. This hurts your people and mine. I want to hear the truth from you. Do you hear me?"

"Yes commander," sighed Ambassador Hilder, "I quite understand. I hoped that I'd been wrong about my initial assumption," he sighed, "I liked simple, I rarely deal with simple but life no simple. Now you know and things become less simple you see?"

John did not see but it hardly seemed the time to say so. He blinked in astonishment as the Ambassador lifted the golden skull from his head and revealed his face. The Ambassador's face was scarred, aged by worry and warfare, and handsome unmistakably human features. The Ambassador smiled abashedly, "You see how this is uncomfortable for us yes?"

"But," floundered John in surprise, "But you're human? How can you be human?"

"You did not know?" The tech priest said incredulously, "How little do your doctors know of human biology," her tone suddenly became horrified, "Should I be going to the med bay to assist Gazan? If their doctor can't recognize human organs on site can we trust his expertise?"

"Doctor patient confidentiality," John laughed shaking his head, "He can't legally tell me any information about the patient that the patient himself hasn't consented to provide me with."

"You had no idea," the Ambassador said in a voice of deadly calm. His bodyguard was shaking behind him with fits of silent laughter, "Truly?"

"Not the remotest clue," Chimed in Miss Winters stonily, apparently grateful to have won a minor victory over the Imperial Ambassador, "You're human… you really are human how could I not have sensed it. You're a human psychic."

"Indeed I am," the ambassador sighed cracked his neck, "Though I would prefer you not focus on that aspect of my character."

"So wait," John pulled the Centauri report on the Imperials up on his data-pad excitedly, "You communicate long distances with psychics? Human psychics?"

"It would seem I picked an opportune time to arrive," Chimed an oily voice from just outside the door. A short man with vaguely Russian features wandered into the room wearing a Psi Corps uniform, "How very interesting."

"And who might you be," Jak in an icy professional tone.

"My name is Alfred Bester," Smiled the little man, "And unless I misunderstand what is going on in this room that would make you," he pointed to the Ambassador, "An unregistered human telepath."

He laughed and looked at John, "I do always seem to get the most interesting assignments on this station. What to do? What to do?"

* * *

As always thanks for reading. As always reviews are welcome and please feel free to point out spelling and grammar errors.

I read all reviews and PM's I receive even if I don't respond to them individually.


	10. Chapter 10

Talia gazed at the Ambassador's pale face and dark eyes, her jaw limply opening and closing as she floundered about searching for words. Human, the man was a human. The great Empire from which they came included humans. Not just humans, the Empire included human telepaths, powerful human telepaths.

Talia Winters hadn't really seen the value in attending meetings with the Imperial ambassador. Earth Force protocol required that any meetings between high-ranking Earth Alliance personnel and extraterrestrial psychics have at least one Psi Corps member in attendance, presumably to monitor and stop any psychic malfeasance. While that was logical in theory, what she could realistically be expected to do in order to stop malfeasance on the part of Ambassador Hilder was anyone's guess. The man was a powerful telepath and a telekinetic to boot.

The Imperial Ambassador was surprisingly coy about his own psychic gift. The few questions she'd asked on the subject had been curtly redirected. This was not to say that he hadn't demonstrated a prodigious psychic man was a deep well of psychic might, dangerous and barely controlled. It was overpowering to be in the same room as him, exciting and terrifying at the same time.

Oh, he had certainly been careful to hide his powers but a psychic can only hide their gifts for so long. He would catch things thrown to him in spite of them being beyond his reach, he often seemed to understand the meaning of words he could not possibly have learned yet, and the Centauri Ambassador's dice had a curious habit of turning out in Hilder's favor, often enough that Londo had given up gambling with him.

The Ambassador's distaste for her was galling but in all fairness the ambassador had suffered some form of psychic attack upon entering the station. As Babylon Five's only registered telepath, it only stood to reason that he would mistrust her.

His dislike of her only made him that much more interesting. How did a species develop the bizarre psychic technologies used by the imperials? What was the purpose of the cables that lined the Ambassador's helmet humming with psychic energy? How were psychics trained on the Imperial worlds? Even as she sat in the Captain's office listening to the Captain and Ambassador she could not help but feel a perverse jolt of excitement. At any moment the Ambassador might well give some nugget of knowledge about his race's own psychic traditions and teachings.

The wonder of the moment was somewhat spoiled by the fact that Ambassador Hilder would have as quickly slit Talia's throat as give her a kind word.

She'd been informed that the most recent meeting would be a discussion of possible dissolution of the Imperial ship's diplomatic presence on the station only a few hours ago. Talia headed to the meeting with a mix dispossessed glee and giddy apprehension. Seeing the back of the Ambassador's damned skull helmet as he walked only a transport and out of her life entirely would have been a marvelous moment in her life.

It would seem however that fate had a different plan than she did. The Ambassador, upon being confronted with allegations of carrying secret weapons onto the station, revealed something altogether more wonderful and terrifying than she'd ever even began to imagine. Beneath the grotesque grinning skull was a healthy, hale, and decidedly human face.

The Captain, apparently somewhat less flummoxed than she, blinked and spoke a stumbling mess of words, "But but you're human? How can you be human?"

"You did not know?" The metallic female voice of Magos Frist groaned and hiccuped out of the speaker under her neck. The female cyborg's tentacles and cybernetic enhancements clicked and shifted confusedly. It gave a disturbingly octopi-like continence to her already inhuman form as her robes shifted with unseen cybernetic enhancements, "How little do your doctors know of human biology? Should I be going to the med bay to assist Gazan? If their doctor can't recognize human organs on site can we trust his expertise?"

Captain Sheridan smiled, "I suspect that Dr. Franklin has the matter well in hand, his last status report stated that Mr. Danzig was stable and recovering."

"But not that he was human?" Magos Frist's monotone drone quirked in confusion.

The Captain laughed heartily, "Doctor patient confidentiality. He can't legally tell me any information about the patient that the patient himself hasn't consented to provide me with."

"You had no idea," came the deadpan reply of the Ambassador as his handsome face scrunched up in consternation. His thoughts, normally so well guarded, broadcast a satisfying mix of amused exasperation and embarrassment.

"Not even the remotest clue," Talia said, poorly masking the excitement in her voice as the reality of the situation began to dawn upon her. If the Ambassador truly was human then he might well be able to tutor her in the clearly advanced techniques of the Empire's psychics, "This one is all on you buddy."

Talia couldn't help but enjoy the dispassionate look on the Ambassador's face, a welcome change from the grinning skull she'd become accustomed to talking with. He might once have been stunning to look at but age and worry had clearly robbed him of beauty. Still, Hilder was handsome in a weatherworn sort of way. Twisted and angry scars ran down the pale flesh on the left side of the man's face, accentuating his eyes and his square jaw, giving a rugged edge to his otherwise noble features.

A million questions spun to the tip of her lips, begging to be asked. However as she opened her mouth to ask one she was interrupted by an oily voice echoing from just outside the Captain's door, "It would seem I picked an opportune time to arrive," Talia turned in shock to see an officer of the Psi Corps in full dress uniform, "How very interesting."

The man was a full head shorter than anyone else in the room, and two shorter than the towering giant of a Skitarii, but he paraded through the door and into the room with all the confidence of a conquering hero. The man wore the uniform of his office like it was his very skin and a smile that was almost indecently self-satisfied.

Talia recognized the smirk and the swagger, even if she didn't recognize the man. High-level operatives within the Psi Corps had a distinct and often insufferable air of superiority to them. The man wore his gloves and badge with dismissive aplomb, his well-pressed suit as orderly as the man himself. A Psi Cop if ever she'd seen one.

"And who might you be," the ambassador's attendant glared daggers at the Psi Corps officer, arms crossed in what he clearly intended to be an imposing manner. The effect was somewhat spoiled by his chronic twitching and fidgeting as well as a sizeable bald patch.

"My name is Alfred Bester," the licentious smile widened and he impetuously waved a black gloved hand around the room, "And unless I misunderstand what is going on in this room that would make you," he pointed to the Ambassador, "An unregistered human telepath. What to do? What to do?" He chortled to himself indecently and looked to the Captain, "I do always seem to get the most interesting assignments on this station."

The Ambassador's bodyguard tensed and his eyes buzzed as they focused on Mr. Bester. A spike of raw emotion rolled off him, a calculating visceral hatred. The implied threat against his master did not sit well with the Skitarii, nor with any of the Imperial retinue.

Talia suddenly realized just how large the two towering cyborgs flanking Magos Frist were, and how much damage she suspected the waving tentacles of the priest could potentially do. The Ambassador may well be a representative of a foreign government but as a human psychic the Psi Corps would have legal authority over him in Earth Alliance territory. Officers of the Psi Corps were given broad authority in the tracking and capture of unregistered telepaths traveling in Earth Alliance territory.

Authority that superseded almost all other military authority.

John Sheridan was the military governor of the Babylon station but if Bester were to issue an order related to the apprehension of an unregistered telepath the Captain would have no legal recourse but to submit to Psi Corps authority. Authority Mr. Bester would no doubt use to demand that the Ambassador be forcibly restrained.

Of course. Hilder's aversion to her made a startling amount of sense.

Of course they hated her; she was Psi Corps. Unregistered telepaths loathed the Psi Corps. The Imperial culture clearly glorified and relied upon psychics, to discover that they were so rigidly controlled within Earth Alliance society had to be unconscionable.

It wasn't simply that she was an "inferior" psychic in there eyes. She was an enemy. The Psi Corps was given wide latitude in their apprehension of rogue psychics, wide latitude they often used to the fullest. She couldn't blame them for resisting the urge to leave their families and friends. Especially after what had happened to Jason Ironheart, her former lover.

The Psi Corps had done things to Jason, things to unlock the potential of his mind, things that changed the fundamental workings of his mind. He'd volunteered for regular injections of acetylcholine and mutated serotonin to stimulate his mind and generate a sable telekinetic. It had not gone well. Jason had become something beyond human, ascending to a being of pure energy and disappearing into the night.

This could well be a disaster in the making but the dangers of it seemed to have been lost upon the Imperial Ambassador. The Hilder just stood staring at Bester with his head quirked to the side as though he'd misheard Bester, shaking his head. He looked at Jak and spoke in the gothic tongue. The translation computer on the desk mechanically droned behind their frenzied chattering.

"I presume that last part was a mistranslation on the part of that infernal machine," the Ambassador whispered amusedly.

"No sir," Jak said slowly as though trying to reconcile the facts of the conversation, "He did in fact just imply that you were an_ nez__á__konn mens ingredior_."

The Ambassador blinked, looked at the Psi Corps officer in utter disbelief, and dissolved into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. The room filled with the sound of the crackling drone of the combined laughter of the Imperials, amusement dancing from their lips and reverberating from their helmets and artificial voice boxes. Tears of elation rolled down the Ambassador's face as he grasped the edge of the desk to support himself.

Suffice it to say that Mr. Bester seemed confused by the Ambassador's lack of appreciation for the predicament, "I believe that your automatic translation computer needs a bit of work Captain. All human psychics in Earth Alliance territory are required to submit to Psi Corps screening and command."

The Ambassador wiped tears of mirth from his eyes as he struggled to get his voice under control for long enough to speak in broken English, failed, and waved for Jak to speak in his place as he whooped and hooted with hilarity. Jak removed his own helmet revealing a twisted and scarred face, covered with ridges and bumps from past surgeries. He was grandfatherly in a twisted bionic sort of way. He smiled toothily and spoke in his concise English, "The Ambassador does not recognize the authority of the Psi Corps over a member of the Imperial government, even if he his human."

"Funny that you say that," smiled Mr. Bester, "Because the Psi Corps aren't willing to blindly accept that the Ambassador is human even if he is a member of the Imperial government."

The Ambassador, still wiping tears of mirth from his eyes, spoke in his stylish patois, "Your meaning is lost."

"Well let me help you find it," Mr. Bester chortled and paced around the Ambassador, apparently amused at his own wit, "We have had not one, not two, but three 'lost brother' races appear to us out of the blue claiming that we're some distant cousins from a far off star appear to us. The Centauri even tried to convince us to allow them to rule us because of that during the first contact. So I hope you'll pardon my skepticism but I need more than a face before I take it for granted that you're actually human."

Rather than being insulted by the accusation the Ambassador's face brightened and his eyes twinkled with mirth at another private joke, "I find that I like you, you funny little man."

"How lovely for you," Bester's lips quirked at a private joke of his own, "Hopefully you like me enough to allow us to test the Imperials to verify your claims that you are, in fact, human and not another race of pretenders or invaders presuming we're a bunch of idiot apes."

"That is," the ambassador stuttered over a complex syllable and swore gruffly in his own language, "ac.. ace.. _fekkna_ c acceptable."

"I want these people confined until we've resolved this situation Captain. It is only appropriate," Bester issued the command without even looking at the Captain, clearly accustomed to having is authority accepted without question.

Sheridan bristled the insult of having his command so publicly subverted but held his tongue. His anger was so powerful Talia could almost taste it. He gritted his teeth and spoke curtly, "I'm afraid he'd correct Ambassador. I will have to confine you to quarters."

The Imperial's were not impressed. "I must examine the station," barked the voice box of Magos Frist, waves of fury billowing from her, "The rites of observation must be completed within ten hours of being started. It is the will of the Omnissiah."

"I will allow you to tour the station but you will be accompanied by a compliment of station security," John shook his head sadly, his waves of emotion seemed more disappointed than angry to Talia.

"Captain you cannot allow these people to have run of the ship till I've investigated the further," Mr. Bester said, clearly expecting his desires to be obeyed without question, "I cannot allow this."

"Are we to be treated like common criminals?" The Ambassador's voice was dark and terrible, rumbling like a storm on the horizon. His broken English reverberated with a dark and terrible suggestion of violence and blue flickers of psychic flames flickered about his face. Talia shook as she felt a jolt of ambient psychic discharge, "Not trusted by our fellow man? You dare to question _me?_ Crushing you is within my power and I have not you insufferable _nez__á__konn mens ingredior_. To the Eye with you is that not enough?"

Captain Sheridan pulled out his side arm and placed it on the desk "Ambassador I will not allow you to threaten Earth officers in front of me nor will I permit you to use your powers to intimate me. Get a hold of your anger. _Now._"

The Ambassador's bodyguard rested a hand on his shoulder and slowly shook his head, warbling a soft series of gurgling tones. At the firm grip of the cyborg's hand on his shoulder the Ambassador composed himself, flickers of balefire disappearing into nothingness. He massaged his scarred temples and exhaled noisily, "Apologies Captain. I do not appreciate being threatened by c that thing." He swatted his hand lazily and dismissively in Bester's direction.

The captain leaned forward over his desk, picking up the pistol and twirling it on his finger. "I hope you appreciate that this new information complicates our already tense diplomatic situation. Until we have this sorted out I am going to have to request that you and your retinue stay confined to quarters unless there is a security contingent guarding you. I cannot begin to imagine why you concealed this from us but now that it is in the open my government will need to re-assess everything, including if we even recognize your diplomatic status."

"We concealed nothing," A tall lean tech-priest behind the Magos droned, "You assumed. You were wrong. The fault is not ours."

"And the masks? The secrecy? How are we supposed to take that?" Captain Sheridan shook his head, "No, I'm afraid this whole situation stinks," he glared at the Ambassador, "I am _not_ in the business of dealing with people who lie to me Hilder, even those who simply forget to mention an important piece of information. Once this is resolved we will talk again, and you will speak the truth to me or not bother wasting my time."

"I am not hiding," The Ambassador started but the Captain cut him off mid sentence, "I don't care Ambassador. You brought weapons on my station. Your monster of a man killed six people, _six _people I'm responsible for. God knows how many will die before the day is out and you've been lying to me since you first stepped on this station. You are going to leave my office," he pointed to the door behind Bester, "Now."

The Ambassador bowed, put his helmet back over his head, and strode out the door. His retinue of tech priests and bodyguards followed closely thereafter. They made a raucous mess of groaning servos and stomping feed as they trod along.

The Skitarii, Thross, was the last to leave the room. He turned and looked Bester in the eyes, glaring hatefully, almost daring Bester to try and read his mind. His tentacles waved around eagerly with the promise of violence, metal clicking and scraping lazily. He whispered a low hissing screech like a scalded cat as Bester met his eyes, staring into the green glass as it spun and ticked.

Bester paled and broke eye contact, apparently whatever he'd seen in the Skitarii's eyes was not something he'd care to see at length. Bester tried to conceal the motion with a cough but Talia had seen, and knew what he'd done. It was troubling that the Psi Cop had preformed an unauthorized scan of the Skitarii but not nearly so troubling as the implication that the Skitarii's mind terrified Bester.

The doors shut firmly, the hissing of air as the spaces pressurized ending the meeting with a cleansing finality. Even so Talia could still feel the increasingly distant Ambassador's presence broiling with rage and resentment.

No doubt Bester did as well, though he gave no sign of it.

John's face distorted in fury as he bellowed, "How dare you! I don't give a damn what authority you have in catching unregistered telepaths, you don't just burst into a diplomatic negotiation and accuse a foreign Ambassador of being a criminal. I _will_ be registering an official complaint."

"Captain I think my interruption is the last of your worries," Bester shook his head, "I don't suppose you've realized the danger in this situation."

"Other than antagonizing a very powerful foreign military?" Captain Sheridan growled, slapping his fist on the table in fury, "Are you crazy? The Ambassador has a shielded ship just off our port side armed to the teeth and you think it's clever to threaten him? They're twitchy at the best of times."

"I think that somewhere out there in the galaxy there is a race of powerful psychics who considers the Earth Alliance to be 'part of their race' Captain. I think there is a race better armed and armored than we are who very well may want to invade us," Bester shook his head sadly, "Captain we cannot allow our hopes for the future cloud our needs for the present. I cannot and will not allow unregistered alien telepaths to just run wild in Earth Alliance space. Much less will I let some humanoid race lull us into complacence just because we're a 'cousin race,' it must not happen."

"What if they are human?" Talia stared at the door the Ambassador left from, feeling his psychic presence as it retreated into the distance. She looked at Bester, "That is to say what if they aren't lying? If they really are human?"

"I suppose we'll have to wait and see," Bester chortled, "But you'll pardon me if I'm not ready to accept a fairy story about some fifty thousand year old secret human culture hidden in the rim of space offhand."

* * *

Osma winced at the agonizing spike of pain, flaring in response to the blinding light shining in front of his face. Osma coughed and cried out, disoriented and blind, "Iino! Iino where are you?"

He waved impotently trying to swat the errant light burning in front of his blinded vision. His hands, strapped down to his sides, only sifted and caused him more pain. "Be still," snapped the furious voice of Faest Nor, "And stop moving. It's a damn miracle you're alive at all."

"Medicus?" Osma shifted weakly trying to raise himself out of bed, "Where am I? How c how did I get here?"

"Osma this is a trauma center in port side of the ship around deck twelve," the shadowy form of Medicus Nor shifted in front of his eyes, cold instruments touching skin lightly, "The building you were in exploded."

"Yes," groaned Osma, memories flooding back. Smoke, fire, burning, the Apothecary had rigged the place to blow. He'd wanted to be found, a trap and Osma had gone straight into it. "Foolish man old man," he chided himself, "I c I remember now."

Medicus Nor pressed down on his chest and Osma went into a fit of coughing. Nor undid the straps and helped Osma lean over the bed. His coughing fit wracked his body agonizingly as he spit a thick black globule of ash-ridden bile on the floor. One of the nurses rushed to scrub the ground, wiping the tiles with vulgar smelling counter septics.

Osma muttered apologetically as the scrubbed away the bile rubbing his thick tangle braided beards with his blistered hands, "Didn't c didn't mean to do that."

"It's alright Anooshesh. There's no shame in being ill," Medicus Nor helped Osma lay back down flat on the bed, "This isn't the primary trauma center but I was afraid to move you further that this treatment facility before I'd checked you more completely for spinal injuries or internal bleeding," Medicus Nor waved to someone in the distance. Another blurry shape in the white robes of a Medicus wandered over from another bed, "Medicus Kex do you have any morphaline 34 or Korrak make regenerative that in stock?"

"Korrak make regenerative," Medicus Kex's voice was cold as ice, "Is a precious commodity in treatment facilities that aren't funded directly from the Lord Sáclair's private purse."

"Nonsense," Medicus Nor snapped, "We receive the same stocks of supplies based upon need and necessity. Everyone is equal in receiving treatment."

"Funny how some people are more equal in receiving treatment than others," Medicus Kex glared and crossed his arms. His blurry form towered over Medicus Nor by a good half a meter but the smaller Medicus stood his ground.

"I doubled your supply rations of paxxix and fendarol beyond what most medical centers get due to the high volume of patients Medicus Kex but there simply isn't the same need to give you agapic restoratives when simple flesh bonders will do the same job," Medicus Nor pressed down lightly along Osma's chest and arms, checking for tension and pain, "They'll scar but they do the same job."

"Funny how all the treatments that don't scar find themselves in the treatment centers used exclusively by officers and the Lionhearts isn't it?" Medicus Kex assisted Nor in flipping Osma on his side so that Nor might press along Osma's back.

"The treatments that don't scar only do so because they are used in concert with the anti-agapic treatments used by the nobility. They're useless without the anti-agapics and I haven't the resources or the clearance to start distributing those treatments to every crewman who wanders in with a compound fracture," Medicus Nor pressed hard at the base of Osma's spine and he yelped in pain, prompting Nor to give him a stern look, "Oh do grow up boy. It doesn't hurt that bad."

Medicus Nor glared back at Kex, "Now you will get me five units of Korrax make regenerative or I will have you written up for review the ship's medical ethics committee."

Kex uncrossed his arms walked in the direction of the dispensary. Medicus Nor shook his head sadly, watching his retreating back, "Fool boy. Idiot child actually believes I'm withholding treatment. I swear I've had to actually cut back on even the number of nobles receiving restorative treatments. We lost most of the medicines when we cut power to the storage units, damn refrigerators were only made to last four hours on the generators." He looked down at Osma, "You're lucky my friend. You managed to get through this with a surprising lack of damage. You'll have some lung problems and soreness from the burns "

"Unharmed," squawked Osma, "I can hardly move my body and I can't feel my legs. You call that unharmed?"

"It's the drugs Osma," Nor slapped his numb arms, "Give it an hour to wear off and you'll be able to move just fine. It will hurt like the devil but you'll be able to go back on duty if need be. Just as well really, you wouldn't obey me if I ordered you to stay in bed and rest."

"The blurriness in my eyes?" Osma asked hopefully.

"A side effect of Morpha," Nor nodded, "It will pass soon, your eyes managed to get out of this with minimal damage."

"Would that my back were the same," Osma retched over the side of his bed, dry black bile slapping on the floor next to the bed wetly, "It feels like a building dropped on me, twice."

"Once was enough Osma," Nor flipped through the chart on the foot of his bed in mild consternation. "I presume that I led you to the correct dispensary. It seems unlikely that the Apothecary would blow up his own dispensary in a fit of pique."

"It was the right one alright. He was a traitor to the core," Osma made the symbol of the Aquilla over his chest, "Vile creature. There was no honor in his dying, the despicable creature actually used children to set off the bomb. Children I tell you! The misuse of children is a monstrous act."

"I seem to remember there being a number of children responsible for loading the ammunition into the point defense batteries," Medicus Nor rolled his eyes, "I treated several who'd lost an arm to an ammunition loader run by an erratic machine spirit."

"Bah," Osma glared, "An adult is too large to fit his hands into the loader, you know that full well. It's a shame but not as great a shame as losing a section of the ship to a vortex torpedo."

"I suspect that your traitor felt much the same," he raised his hands conciliatory at Osma's glare of rage, "I did not say he was justified in his actions, only that he probably believed himself justified. And if it makes you feel any better he did not succeed in killing all his apprentices."

"There are survivors?" Osma sat up eagerly and fell back to the bed, immediately regretting the rapid movement of his twisted spine.

"A boy, Tomman I believe his name is, one of the apprentice Apothecaries," Nor clucked his tongue against his teeth, "A child of only five. Apparently one of the older boys tossed him into a refrigeration unit when the bomb went off. He's suffering from hypothermia and severe traumatic stress but he ought to survive."

"I'll interrogate him as soon as I'm able then," Osma nodded confidently. The child wouldn't know much, it was unlikely that Xian had entrusted a five year old with the secrets of the Amon Sui but it was likely he hadn't been as guarded around the child either. Adults often underestimated the memories of young children.

"No," Nor said firmly, crossing his arms and glaring. His face became wholly cold and unreadable, "You will not."

"I beg your pardon?" Osma growled angrily. The sheer arrogance of it was astounding, "The boy has information I need. He will provide it."

"I will not hand over a five year old to the methods of questioning used to interrogate those guilty of treason," Nor leaned in towards Osma, poking him in the chest. Each prod caused a powerful burst of pain, "I can not condone it medically or morally. I will have you confined to this bed for medical reasons from now till judgment day if it will protect that boy from being put to the question."

Osma snarled, "Do you think so little of me Nor? Do you think me a monster?"

"I remember your willingness to assist the Inquisitor in his 'search for truth' Osma, never forget who I am. I have seen you at your worst," Nor's eyes burned furiously, "I name you a torturer as I have watched you do torture. Had the Inquisitor ordered you to I have no doubt you'd have tortured me without a thought."

"It was an Inquisitorial mandate, a holy quest from the most holy of worlds. What was I to do? Duty and God Emperor above all earthly pleasures Nor." Osma frowned and repeated the words he said to himself every night in troubled dreams, "It was my duty. I had no choice."

"Namir chose differently," Nor said cruelly.

Osma recoiled at the name as though he'd been scalded, "Namir made his choice. I do not hate him for it."

"Hate _him_ for it? _Him_? What of hatred for yourself," Nor looked up as Kex walked back into the room from the dispensary, a glass vial in his hands, "We'd best make it six units. There are more burns than I realized."

Osma's head rang with the sound of his grinding teeth, "Namir took his own life to absolve the shame of having betrayed the ship to the Amon Sui. My brother died in honor."

"No Osma," Nor shook his head as he injected the syringe of Korrak regenerative into Osma's intravenous feed, "Your brother killed himself avoid forcing you to face the shame of knowing you would willingly torture family for the sake of honor."

Osma spat in Nor's face, "Do not speak of what you do not understand."

"Tell me you wouldn't have put your brother to the question on the Inquisitor's orders," Nor wiped the bile from his face with the sleeve of his smock. Cold and calm, Nor was eternally cold and calm, "And the boy is yours."

Osma glared back silently, empty words and false platitudes silently dancing on the tip of his tongue. He wanted so badly to correct Nor, to tell him that he was speaking falsehoods, to slap him till he saw the truth. But he did not. He sat silently, shame creeping into his face.

Nor nodded sadly, "I thought not." His face warmed slightly and his voice softened, "I do not mean disrespect Osma. You are a good man but I will not allow your duty and piety to go too far."

"You test the boundaries of our friendship Nor," Osma growled sadly, "Perhaps you test it too far." It would be hard to forgive Nor for what he'd said, perhaps he never would.

"I am as bound to my duty as you are to yours. And our friendship survived the actions of that bastard Hilder so I suspect you'll forgive cross words." Nor smiled sadly. "Give me your word that no harm will come to the boy and he is yours. He will probably be better cared for by you than he would with the orphanages at the moment."

"You cannot mean for me to keep the boy?" Osma sputtered confusedly, "Throne Almighty, you accuse me of wanting to torture the boy one second and then suggest I'm ideal to raise him the next. Have you lost your wits or are you just sampling from the dispensary?"

"I think you'll find a great deal of parenting will consist of resisting the urge to torture the boy," Nor chuckled, "But I was thinking more in terms of apprenticing him to the security forces. If I put him in an orphanage now there is a chance he'll probably just end up as an ammunition loader or a reactor crawler," Nor shuddered, "There aren't many of them that live to old age."

"Not many security guards either," Osma replied. Most caught a bullet by their third year of active duty. Green guards were invariably assigned to duties in the darks or the narrows where life was cheap and many of the gangs regarded the killing of a security guard a requisite for entry.

"I suspect you'll be the proper one for training him to avoid that," snorted Nor, "As bitter of a curmudgeon you are you'll outlive us all."

"Speaking of bitter old curmudgeons where's Iino?" Osma looked to the beds round him, "Are the Tech-priests treating him somewhere else?"

"After a fashion," Nor sighed, "Osma c Iino shielded you from the fires with his refractor field. He shielded you with his _personal_ refractor field."

"How on earth did he get it to protect the two of us?" Osma felt his heart sinking even as he said the words. The Enginseer was good, but he was not so skilled as to alter a personal shield in a matter of seconds. Refractor fields required massive amounts of power even for a small generator and altering them was a finicky task at the best of times.

"Simply put he didn't," Nor sighed, "Osma he clamped the refractor field generator to you and tried the block the blast with his own body. The tech priests are strong but they aren't invincible. Iino did not survive."

"Blood of the Primarchs no!" Osma cried despondently. The humorless tech priest had never been a friend to Osma. Iino had always been too ill tempered to bother with keeping friends, much preferring the company of the machines in his workshop, but he was a stable presence on the ship Osma had come to rely on.

He was one of the few people on the ship who never questioned Osma's actions in the service of the Inquisitor, the man thought all in macros and equations. Hell, it has probably been for that reason alone that he'd sacrificed himself instead of Osma. Osma must have been 'less replaceable' than he was.

"Calm yourself Osma," Nor patted Osma's shoulder conciliatory, "Anger will not bring him back from the grave."

"No," Osma growled. His eyes burned as tears fell down his face, "It will not. But catching these Amon Sui bastards and crucifying them in the market sector will go a long way towards easing my conscience. There has been enough death on this ship for their damned cause."

"In that at least we agree Osma," Nor smiled wearily, "In that at least we agree."

* * *

David stared at the package, trying to guess what was inside of it. It was a simple brown wooden box wrapped in paper, innocuous enough, but he knew it must be anything but innocuous. Dex would not have bothered recruiting him to transport something legal.

He was a traitor to his father and a shame to his family. He'd become everything a bastard child was destined to be but he couldn't bring himself to feel guilty about it. He couldn't even bring himself to feel guilty about not feeling guilty. Bonnafila was improving steadily and measurably due to the first injection of Dex's serum. She'd even opened her eyes briefly.

God he'd felt his heart soar when she'd opened her eyes. It was like all the joy in the world had suddenly come back into his heart and he could laugh again.

He'd considered showing the serum to Faest or one of the other ship's Docere Medicus to try and have them reverse engineer the serum but there was no way for him to know which of the Medicus would be part of the Amon Sui informant network on the ship. Even were a doctor to not be part of the network he always ran the risk of being arrested for xenos techno-heresy for even owning the vial of xenos serum.

No, he would have to play Dex's game. Dex was a bastard to be sure but as long as Bonafila got better he could be just as much of a Throne cursed bastard as he damn well pleased. And if it got in the way of what the Inquisitor was planning all the better, it was that damned fool of an Inquisitor responsible for Bonafila getting hurt in the first place. To the Eye with him and his entire damned crusade.

But what was inside the box? It was driving him insane. Dex had shown up out of the blue and handed a box to him, barely larger than David's palm, and warned him not to open the box under any circumstances. He was to wait in the back room of the Sainted Son, one of the market sector's many dingy and darkly lit pubs, till his contact arrived. David wasn't sure how long he was intended to wait but it already felt like he'd been sitting there for days.

He hadn't trusted the quality of the liquor in the Sainted Son enough to order anything the pub had on tap. Even if he had David wasn't about to do anything to dull his wits. There was still the very real possibility that Dex was setting David up to take a fall for something or another. He contented himself with a jug of water and a plate of something the barkeep assured him had once been steak, though judging by the color of it not a steak cut from any animal he'd ever seen before. Still, in spite of its color and chewy texture, it was salty, savory and filling.

"Enjoying yourself are you?" David looked up from his half finished plate and wiped his face with his sleeve. A curvy noble woman in a tight fitting bodice entered the room, closing the door to the private dining room behind her and sitting across from David. A sheer veil that did more to accentuate her features than conceal them covered her face and bosom.

"Are you who I am supposed to be meeting," David mumbled weakly as he thought of Bonafila and tried not to ogle her generous chest and full lips. The woman's presence was intoxicating, David was not a lusty man but his mind was briefly clouded with wicked thoughts, "I mean did Dex..."

"I am who you are meeting child," The woman's voice was feminine yet powerful, dominant, irresistible, "Focus on me, not on him."

David held up the box. It was heavy in his hand, rough wood rubbing his skin. He was eager to be rid of it, "I'm supposed to give this to you."

"Not yet I think boy," her lips quirked amusedly behind the veil, "We still have much to talk of."

"I'm not looking for conversation with a saboteur Madam," David said spitefully waving the box in front of her face. The paper on the box crumpled loudly as his fingers clenched the box.

"You'll find yourself ever in silence if you do not intend to talk with a member of the Amon Sui child. Do not think yourself better than I am, you are not the only one to have dedicated to the Amon for love, for wealth," she laughed wickedly, "Or in the service of a higher power than yourself. You are the same as I, so let us dispense with the insufferable bouts of moral certitude. I haven't the time for them."

"I am not," David failed impotently for the words but none came to mind. What exactly wasn't he? Not a traitor? Not aiding the Amon Sui? Not betraying his own blood father and half siblings? What wasn't he doing? No, he wasn't a traitor. He was loyal to the one that mattered, he would repent once she was well.

He was sure of it, he reminded himself fervently, he was no traitor.

The woman rolled her eyes contemptuously, shaking her head with mirth. The veil sifted tantalizingly above her chest as she replied, scathingly caressing her scorn with full lips and startlingly white teeth, "Boy we have no time for your flights of fancy. Stay in the here and now. You will call me Stenatoda. You will respond to the name Herphyllus."

"My name is David," his surly reply was not well received. Stenatoda raised and elegant hand and smacked him firmly across the face. David recoiled and grasped the spot she'd slapped, his fingers slick with blood from where her many rings had sliced into the soft flesh of his cheek.

Stenatoda glared from behind her veil, "There is no room in our enterprise for the petulance of young boys. If I believe you to be a risk to the greater purpose of the Amon Sui I will cut your throat myself."

"Aaah," cried out David as the wound on his face began to sting and burn. He grabbed his mug of water off the table and splashed himself in his face. All it accomplished was to spread the burning sensation to his eyes and mouth, "What have you done to me?"

"Reminded you of your place bastard son of the traitor," Stenatoda towered over him, a terrifying figure of silks and skirts, "The poison on my rings is not lethal but it will serve as an adequate example for the future. Then again perhaps another reminder is necessary." She kicked out and caught him in the ribs with the toe of her boot.

David coughed and sputtered, "I understand. I understand."

Stenatoda laughed, "See how the dog knows his place. See how he barks on command, good doggie, good."

David looked up at her through his blearily eyes and shuddered at her gaze of disgust, "Just give me the treatment and let me go."

"I must be mistaken," Stenatoda growled, "It sounds like you just tried to give me an order bastard of the traitor. Does the traitor's bastard still believe himself to be in charge?"

David swallowed his pride and croaked out, "Please give me the treatments mistress."

"Disgusting," she reached into her bodice and pulled out two metallic syringes, dropping them to the floor next to David. David reached out for them cried out in pain as she stepped down on his hand with the heel of her boot, "Herphyllus why do you serve the Amon Sui?"

"I need the treatments mistress," David was sure she'd cracked a bone in his hand, "I need them for the girl I love."

"No boy. That's why you _want_ to serve the Amon Sui. The truth is that you serve the Amon Sui because it is your destiny, because this ship, it's peoples, and its crew are extensions of the Amon Sui. You are vassals of the Amon, even if you've forgotten your place," she lifted her shoe from David's hand and helped him to his feet. Her voice softened, "Now you remember. You, I, anyone on this ship is less than the Amon Sui's great work. Herphyllus, you've forgotten who you are, who we are. I will help you remember."

David wiped the blood from his face where it leaked from a split lip, "I don't suppose there was a less painful way of demonstrating that to me?"

She laughed, a throaty sound full of flirtatious antipathy. "Boy we remember our mistakes because they cause us pain. Pain is a learning tool. If we do not hurt we do not learn. Consider our first class together," she reached out and grabbed David painfully by his ear and twisted, "There will be many, many more."

She leaned over to the table and picked up the box, "It's wise that you didn't open this box boy. There is nothing inside of it, well nothing that you'd ever want to expose to the air. Veranda toxin can devour the flesh of any living within a room in a matter of seconds, even the mighty Adeptus Astrates are reduced to little more than bloody glop. It was a test. There will be many such tests in the coming days."

David growled and shoved the woman away from him, "I don't like when people waste my time and energy. I am not some pathetic peon for you to be abusing and shoving around as you will."

"Ah," the woman opened a fan and proceeded to wave it at herself, wafting her perfume in David's direction, "The Sáclair fires. I'd been beginning to wonder if you were truly your father's bastard or if your mother had enlisted the services of some other noble to sire you."

"I'm glad you appreciate it, "David growled and pulled a pistol out of his pocket. He raised the small ivory handled laspistol and aimed it between Stenatoda's eyes. "Here's a test for you mistress. Now that I have what I need from you what reasons do I have to keep you alive? What reason do you have to keep me alive after I've helped you with your sabotage?"

"Child," Stenatoda shook her head unconcernedly, "You don't understand even now child. We own you. Simply by having attended this meeting you are a heretic and a traitor. You've taken our payment, delivered a deadly plague in a box, you've consorted with the worst saboteur on the ship and you've let him go without reporting it. If you kill me the Amon won't have to waste time and effort on killing you. Your father will do it for us.

David growled, "My father would not convict me of heresy and sedition without trial."

"Child what exactly do you think would come out at that trial?" Her veils shifted and shook with exasperation, "You are a boy of not even twenty years. Do you honestly believe that you were able to take sufficient precautions that we have no evidence to provide such a court? We hid from an Inquisitor and the security forces of this station for years. If you believe that you will avoid conviction then you are a fool. A witless fool."

She sat down and gestured to one of the chairs, "Now sit. We have much to talk about boy. Your future is in the making and you will serve as my alibi over the next couple hours."

"Your alibi?" David sat down in the chair, his sore ribs throbbing, "Your alibi for what."

"The terrorist attack on the primary power station," Stenatoda lifted her veil showing a familiar milky white face covered in thick twisting scar tissue, "It's unlikely my connections will be found but it wouldn't do for me to be implicated in it after all. I do have such a memorable face."

David stared at her ripped face in absolute horror, "But the power station is the core of the ship! You'll destroy us all!"

"Not likely," Stenatoda smiled, the scars over the left side of her face twisting, "This is a demonstration of power, we simply wish for the traitor Sáclair to remember that we can hit him at any moment."

"He'll only get madder at you," David stared down at the syringes inn his hand, "How long do you need me here for?"

"Not too long boy, you'll have plenty of time to go back to your woman," her lips quirked, "She will get what she needs." She pulled a crystal timepiece from a pocket in her skirts, "And if you question me again you will lose your tongue."

David suspected it was not an idle threat and held his tongue, sitting in silence with the pale woman. She looked vaguely familiar, but after a few generations of inbreeding between the noble houses that was hardly surprising. It was Nathaniel Sáclair's father Traanvis Sáclair who'd abolished the practice of marrying siblings and cousins, though he had continued the Sáclair tradition of marrying the previous captain's wife. She had fortunately died before producing an heir meaning that Nathaniel Sáclair was born of a marriage between Traanvis Sáclair and Sharri Mumad of the _Constant Vigil_, another Amon Sui ship of Damascan origin.

Still there was something insufferably familiar about her. She sat like a noblewoman of the ship's court but he couldn't remember ever having seen her there, with or without the veil. There were numerous nobles, but not so many that he would forget one with Stenatoda's generous figure. He was a man after all.

Stenatoda glared at him witheringly, "I have no interest in the silent appraisals of the bastard son of a traitor. Either speak your mind or avert your eyes."

"Am I to speak now?" David said sarcastically, "You seem to have had a different opinion moments ago."

"Speak and be done with it boy." The woman lazily waved jeweled fan, fluttering her veil temptingly.

David shook his head, "How do I know you? I know I remember you from somewhere, but where?"

Stenatoda blinked and stared at him, glaring at his ineptitude, "Child, you define new lows of stupidity with every word. My name is Stenatoda. My name will continue to be Stenatoda to you much as yours will be Herphyllus to you. We have no names. We are tools of a cause. We do not learn the names of other operatives you stupid, stupid boy."

The room groaned and the walls shook as though the ship had suffered an impact to the side of its hull. Warning klaxons screeched overbearingly. The lights flickered and Stenatoda smiled widely, "Fantastic, we've moved to the next step."

"Great for you," David stood and turned to walk out of the room. His fingers shook with anger as he grasped the syringes as he broiled with range withing his own head. Damn them, damn them all. Bonafila was worth it but damn them all.

"Not so fast child," Stenatoda walked up and pressed her body up to David's. David could not help but notice her curves pressing up against his chest in all the right places, "Your job is not quite done yet." She gave him a sultry look and kissed him on the lips, "I still need my Alibi."

David shoved her away in disgust and opened his mouth to protest but only managed a weak murmured "nugh huh" as he felt a woozy blurriness in his words as his lips and face numbed. He stepped forwards two steps and fell to the ground, the syringes clattering across the floor. Stenatoda leaned over him and laughed, "Helping you to the hospital for flox poisoning ought to give me more than sufficient alibi for my whereabouts, and you reason to administer the treatments to your woman outside of hospital hours," she giggled, "That is of course assuming you survive long enough to have an antidote administered."

David tried to yell "bitch" but only managed a half-hearted, "Gwarp," before his lips gave out entirely. Stenatoda lifted him, snarling with the effort, "Silence child, we have much work to do before you're done for the day. And to try not to bite off your own tongue, you'll need it later."

* * *

As the leader of the Minbari peoples on Babylon five it was Delenn's duty to meet with them and resolve whatever problems they might be having. By and large it was mundane immigration and taxation matters. The Minbari system of collecting tithes from their citizenry was vastly different from the abstract systems used by the Earthers or the Centauri. Other times Minbari seeking spiritual guidance would come to her seeking wisdom and clarity.

What Teronn was seeking was anyone's guess.

The worker caste member scheduled an appointment but neglected to write the details of his meeting, an unprecedented action in Delenn's tenure. Custom dictated that she not deny him a meeting in spite of this.

So it was that Delenn found herself awkwardly standing in a room with Teronn. Teronn's robes were somewhat thread worn but his calm smile and polite mannerisms granted him a subdued dignity. Delenn honestly couldn't remember much more about him than that he owned a bookshop in blue sector.

She certainly couldn't think of a reason requiring for him to be in her quarters.

"I'm not sure I understand the meaning of this meeting Teronn," Delenn said confusedly.

"I have been delegated by others who," Teronn stumbled over the words, clearly uncomfortable to be speaking with her, "Delenn there is concern among our people here on Babylon Five, meaning no disrespect. They worry that you are no longer one of us."

Delenn flinched, he might as have slapped her. At least he was graced with the common courtesy to look as embarrassed as Delenn felt.

She felt red-hot rage rushing into her cheeks, "I am more one of us at this moment than I have ever been. More than you will ever know," Delenn turned and faced the Minbari behind her, keeping her face a mask of passive indifference in spite of the rage welling in her breast, "I appreciate your concerns but there is nothing I can tell you at this time. _Later._"

Teronn shook his head sadly and bowed his head, "This cannot wait. We need to understand what is happening."

"Understanding is not required," Delenn clenched her teeth and glared, "Only obedience."

"To our own kind yes," Teronn opened his hands palms to the sky in polite submission, "But that is the question. Are you any longer our own kind? We have the right know."

Teronn might as well have slapped her. Did they not realize that she'd sacrificed who she was for the greater good of all Minbari?

No, no they did not.

Of course they did not.

They could not. The knowledge of what she'd become and why was known only to the Grey Council, and even they only held mere snippets of knowledge given to them by the Vorlons. There were times where she forgot how alien the secrets of the Grey Council were to the rest of her people.

Teronn spoken into the awkward silence, "If you cannot give us what we need, we will ask permission to send a representative to speak directly with the Grey Council."

He paused politely and looked her in the eyes, "Unless you object."

The Earth caste worker's polite and reasonable request to know what she was bit as hard as the worst of insults. She'd prepared herself for any number of questions from the humans. It was to be expected that she would have to work for their understanding, but the Minbari were her own people. There truly was no legitimate reason for her to bar them from petitioning the council other than selfish fear. It was entirely possible that the council might have much of the same doubts about her loyalty as the Minbari Teronn represented.

Delenn swallowed her pride, "No, I have no objections. Is there anything else?"

"No," Teronn bowed deeply. A good two inches further than would be required of him socially, "Thank you."

Lennier stepped on Teronn's robes as the Worker caste member walked out the door, causing the two of them to stumble awkwardly to the ground. The stoic worker simply waved off Lennier's apologies and exited out of the room after righting himself.

The door shutting behind him with a whooshing clang.

Delenn chuckled politely do herself and helped her assistant to his feet, "That was not necessary Lennier."

"I have no idea what you're talking about Satai Delenn," Lennier's face was the picture of innocence, "I'm simply prone to clumsiness, it comes and goes."

"See that it goes more often than it comes Lennier," Delenn shook her head, "I will not have you resorting to such pettiness to those who are too small minded to see the importance in what I do. They'll come to see eventually."

"Of course Delenn," Lennier smiled skeptically and held up a data pad, "Shall we continue with your appointments for the day?"

"No Lennier," Delenn sighed, "I think I need some time to myself."

* * *

Londo smiled at the portrait of his father. Cena Mollari had once been a giant of a man, as great of a Centauri as one could hope to become but his final years had not been kind to him. Ravaged by senility and a weak heart the man had slowly degraded into a hollow shell of a man, capable of remembering who he'd been but unable to remember how one went about being him. Death came as a blessing.

Still in Centauri tradition Londo devoted the anniversary of his fathers death to quiet introspection, largely in the form of heavy drinking. He sat alone in his quarters, drinking and talking with the portrait of his father. Trying to figure out what his father might have said in response to the trials and tribulations in his life. He often suspected his father would have had less difficulty in finding easy solutions but ones memories of the departed were often overly generous.

"Vir," Londo ground his teeth as the door opened and footsteps clicked along the tiles of his floor, "Was I not clear that I am not to be disturbed by anyone at all?"

"Perhaps," laughed the sallow voice of Mr. Morden, "But not to me."

"Mr. Morden," Londo sighed, "I suppose I should forego with the effort of trying to figure out how you gained the entry codes to my room or trying to convince you to leave."

"That's what I like about you Ambassador," Mr. Morden smiled, "You're realistic."

"If you're not going to get to a point than you're welcome to direct yourself out the door," Londo pointed to the hallway, "It's right over there."

Mr. Morden tutted, "Now, now ambassador. No need for that."

"Shouldn't you be off somewhere finding out information how in Maker's name the Imperials can possibly be human?" Londo sipped at his drink lazily, "Isn't that what everyone is doing right now?"

"I beg your pardon?" Mr. Morden lost his composure entirely for the first time in Londo's memory, "They're what?"

"Human," Londo blinked, "Certainly you knew, it's been the talk of the station."

"I was... indisposed for most of the day."

"And deaf apparently," Londo chuckled, "Well apparently they're human alright. Dr. Franklin is testing it as we speak."

Mr. Morden chewed his lip nervously, "This changes the landscape entirely. The rules of engagement..." Mr. Morden trailed off nervously, "Ambassador Mollari we will speak again soon. Forgive me I must go."

"No rush," Londo went back to nursing his drink contentedly, "Stay away as long as you need to. I'll keep busy somehow."

* * *

Daul grudgingly allowed himself to be led back into his quarters by the security forces and shut the door behind him, feeling distinctly exposed. Kerrigan and her retinue opted to continue their inspection of the ship under surveillance but Daul needed a moment of peace and quiet to reassess the situation. Daul chuckled as Cairn pulled a flask of something alcoholic out of his robes and offered it to him.

"Where would I be without you Cairn?" Daul took the flask and took a deep draw at the amber liquid, it burned comfortingly as it slid down his throat. He doubled up coughing soon after, "Emperor above do you drink that or strip engines with it?"

Cairn tilted his head and shook his shoulders amusedly. The Skitarii's body creaked with the effort of his expressive silence.

"I suppose you need something that can do both at the same time, you self important toaster," Daul stared across the room to the door, "Damn I wish Kerrigan were here."

"The Magos implied that her task would not be too time consuming sir," Jak twitched on his feet, hobbling over to the humble sitting area and his pile of missives and scrolls, "I suspect that she'll be back as quickly as she may."

"Jak, Magos Frist's version of 'not too time consuming' only guarantees that she plans to be finished prior to the final judgments of the Golden Throne," he shook his head and placed Cairn's flask on the counter-top, "I prefer to work on a more timely schedule."

Jak grunted a noncommittal "eh" in response and busied himself with the pile of scrolls and papers, quickly becoming lost to the world as he muttered an incoherent stream of facts, figures, and ideas, chattering and muttering as he read. Occasionally he stopped long enough to raise his hand and push the spectacles back up his beaklike prurience of a nose.

Cairn raised the remnant of an eyebrow in amused incredulity and busied himself with behind the task of preparing a meal. Daul did not trust the food preparation centers on the station yet, preferring to eat what provisions Sáclair could ship to them.

"Where in the hell is that damned Ogryn?" Daul looked around the room in fury, "The Captain didn't mention him at all. If that insufferable ignoramus has been arsing around on the station instead of coming to me and reporting that one of the men he was guarding was injured I swear to the throne I'll bounce the laggard off the damn ceiling just to knock the stupid out of him. I am his liege lord, if one of the men in my service is mortally wounded I expect to be informed about it by him _before_ I'm confronted by the bloody Alliance."

Cairn warbled disapprovingly and crossed his arms. Daul ignored him. Physically punishing his initiates was not generally part of Daul's rapport but he feared that short of corporal punishment the Ogryn's mind wouldn't bother to retain the severity of his displeasure.

"I don't like this Cairn," Daul tossed his helmet from one hand to the other, staring at the hexigrammic runes, " We're lost at sea, and I feel as though I might be swept up in the squall at any moment. Throne help me but I do."

"Been lost before you have," Croaked Vira'capac. The kroot was reclined on Daul's bed, his two hounds snuggling up contentedly at his sides, pawing happily at the soft material of Daul's blankets. The Inquisitor blinked in surprise, he hadn't even noticed that the Kroot was in the room. He reached out with his mind reflexively and found that something masked the presence of the Kroot slightly, blending him in with the normal background.

"Are you going to explain why your psychic presence is masked Vira'capac or am I supposed to simply guess," Daul cracked his neck and walked over to the door of his room, "For that matter why are you back in the apartment. My instructions were to stay in the carrion eater's sector and keep an eye out for genestealers or any other stowaway species we might need to be aware of."

"Masked? Really," Vira'capac snapped his fingers and crowed, preening the quills of one of his mastiffs, "Must have been something I ate."

"You're avoiding the question Vira'capac. Why are you here?" Daul crossed his arms and scowled at the Kroot, subtly adding an psychic aura of intimidation to his glare.

If Vira'capac was affected at all he did not show it. The inverted slits of his pupils opened and closed unconcernedly as he twisted his head to the left, staring with a single yellow eye, "Inquisitor knows why. Inquisitor is not angry at Vira'capac. Vira'capac is not to blame for humans not trusting humans, it is your way."

"That is not a full answer," Daul growled, "Speak clearly or suffer my wrath."

Vira'capac growled slightly and his mastiffs perked up, starting at Daul intently, "It is as complete an answer as Vira'capac can give. Babylon humans not trust you. Babylon humans find me. Babylon humans bring me here. All other answers you have or you know without Vira'capac."

"You couldn't hide from them," Daul said incredulously, "Surely you could have gotten beyond their reach."

"Vira'capac could have but why would Vira'capac chose to? Babylon humans and you are not enemies, or were not enemies. Babylon humans ask Vira'capac to follow them. Vira'capac smell not malice or rage and see no threat from them. Vira'capac follow," the Kroot hissed angrily, "Or does the Inquisitor wish for Vira'capac to tear out every Babylon human's throat when they ask him to follow."

"Leave my room xenos," Daul's voice rattled with icy contempt, flickering sparks of psychic fire sparking from his psychic hood, "I have no patience for you."

Vira'capac with the Kroot stood grunting from the exertion of shoving the mastiffs from his lap. The hounds stretched luxuriously and hopped to the ground, talon tipped feet clattering loudly on the deck plates. The two hounds glared angrily at Daul with avian leers, clearly annoyed to have been rousted from the mattress.

"Vira'capac does have information for the Inquisitor. Information worth knowing," he offered a crystal pulled from a satchel at his side to the inquisitor, "There are those who wish your attentions. Those who should not be ignored."

Daul smacked the crystal out of the Kroot's hand and snarled, "I have had my fill of these xenos ambassadors bending and bowing and scheming and prying into our affairs. I will not have some damned carrion eater sniffing about at my heels passing along notes when I have more important things to deal with."

Vira'capac spat at the floor and hissed, hackles raised and quills flaring. His hounds growled ominously, "Inquisitor you will not hit Vira'capac again. I am bound by honor not to harm you, my hounds are not." The hounds snapped their razor sharp beaks eying the soft meat of Daul's flesh hungrily.

"Get out Vira'capac. Get out of my sight," Daul glared furiously, "Hide in some dark corner and wait till I have need of you."

The heavy footfalls of Cairn echoed behind him. The Skitarii carried a tray of dinner meats in one hand and a pistol he'd concealed Throne only knew where in the other. He warbled idly in binary and motioned to the door with one of his face tentacles.

Vira'capac left the room with his hounds, hissing and growling like a scalded cat. Cairn shut the door and turned to Daul, shaking his head in consternation. Disapproval radiated from him in waves as he hid the pistol within a compartment of his chest and poured a large glass of amsec and recaff.

"Don't give me that look. I know what I'm doing," Daul snatched the cup and sat on the bed sullenly stirring the aromatic drink. He stared into the small whirlpool he was making, "I really do know what I'm doing."

Cairn gwarked skeptically in binary and served a generous portion of preserved grox, candied fruit and tinned biscuits onto his plate. Daul perched upon the edge of the bed with the tray in his lap, plagued by a conflicting mix of desire to eat and a lack of hunger.

"I don't know if I want to eat this Cairn," Daul prodded a bit of salt-grox half-heartedly with a fork before giving up. It just didn't seem like a good time to be eating.

Cairn disagreed. The cyborg glared at the petulant Inquisitor pointing at his plate and clearly not intending to let the Inquisitor do anything other than finish his entire plate, "Cairn really I ate a large meal not that long ago."

Cairn's photoreceptors focused disbelievingly and his tentacles twitches as he pulled out his chronometer and tapped it. Daul hedged the issue, "Last night isn't that long ago Cairn."

Cairn tapped his foot on the floor, his shoulders as immobile as Daul had ever seen them. Well there was nothing else for it but to tuck in. Daul muscled down the plate of preserved foods and salted meats with some effort, washing it down greedily with a generous amount of amsec and recaff.

He drank more generously from the bottle amsec than was probably wise and felt a blissful absence of care wash over him. His current problems were suddenly miles away, his past slapped him about the ears. As he tried to pour himself an eighth glass of Amsec Cairn snatched the bottle

He licked his lips and reclined on the bed, chuckling to himself, "God man you're like having a second wife. It's a pity you never really had the chance to get to know Elzabeth. Oh you spent time around her but I never really had you two together enough for you to know her." Elzabeth died a year before Daul left do investigate the Endless Bounty. She'd fallen from her horse and died of complications relating to a fractured spine.

Daul hadn't taken the loss well.

Daul laughed coldly as a tear ran down the side of his face, "She was too young to die of illness or exertion. After all the damn foolish things we did together in the service of the Emperor for her to die of an infected wound is simply inhuman," he sniffed at his now empty glass. It still made the hairs of his nose tingle, "First my wife, then my home, then what little was left of my family. If the Emperor has some plan in all this I do not see it Cairn."

Cairn awkwardly took the glass from Daul's hand and put the liquor away, gurgling bemusedly to himself, apparently unsure if he should have allowed the Inquisitor to drink at all. Cairn was welcome to stuff his opinions back in the same compartment he hid his gun.

"Throne help me I cannot see it," Daul closed his eyes and slowly fell asleep. His mind filled with dark memories and troubled dreams as the room blurred into dark nothingness.

* * *

"Captain I cannot simply provide you with information about one of my patients. Even if the Ambassador has consented to allow testing of his people to verify that they are human," Stephen put down his clip board and glared at the monitor. The very nerve of suggesting it was astounding. Conducting tests, even non-invasive ones, to provide information to the government about the medical specific condition of a patient without that patient's informed consent was patently absurd, "I can't and won't just hand over the information about Danzig's treatment."

"I'm not asking you to violate your medical oath," Captain Sheridan sighed, his face seeming to have aged decades in a matter of hours, "The CdC actually requires that we run tests on the blood of any newly encountered species prior to exposing them to our ships. We waived those tests because the Imperials wore the pressure suits. We already have the blood work of Vira'capac on record right? I just need you to take the blood samples required by law."

"This is a gross manipulation of the system," Stephen snarled, "It's immoral, it's unethical and I just will not take any part in it. Either you find a different solution or you find yourself a new head of medicine."

"Stephen," the Captain's voice pleaded, "We really must have these tests completed, and soon. We need to get this situation under control _now_ while we have the authority. I've already got the Psi Core breathing down my neck. It's only a matter of time before he manages to talk either the senate or the president into allowing him to take action."

"Psi Corps is here? On the station?" Stephen affected a forced air of casualness into his voice that felt unnatural and flustered. Among other things Stephen ran a cell of the underground railroad for telepaths, helping sneak them into foreign territories and out of the reach of the Psi Corps. Even now there were a good dozen fugitive telepaths hidden in brown sector waiting for a chance to hop a transport to a rim world colony of the Abbai.

He'd never intended to become part of the underground railroad for telepaths, much less it's leader on the Babylon. It was somewhat inevitable in retrospect. Stephen was a man of principle and passion, a healer. It was not in him to hear stories of the abuses and cruel experiments conducted by the Psi Corps and not take action. The blanket authority that the Earth government had given the Psi Corps apparently also gave them blanket immunity from prosecution.

In their search for the creation of better psyches they did things to the mind and the body that were not simply immoral, they were anathema to the human condition. They did things to their own kind that would have made the Dilgar take pause to consider the morality of their actions. Stephen would not, and could not support the Psi Corps.

It was a shame that Susan was such a vocal critic of the Psi Corps, Stephen could have used her help. Unfortunately she would call too much attention to the situation. The second the Psi Corps came looking for hidden psychics on station she would be the first person who's mind they wanted to probe, "Are they here for the Imperials already?"

"Yes," Captain Sheridan grimaced at the thought of it, "A Psi Cop and a real grade A jerk who goes by the name of Bester."

"We've met," Stephen was panicking. Dear god, if he didn't get the Psi Cop off the station this would be a disaster, "I see where you're coming from Captain. I'll see how I can resolve this situation."

"Very good Doctor," Captain Sheridan smiled, "I appreciate it."

"Uh captain," the doctor foundered, searching for a way of saying what needed to be said without violating his oaths of office, "Can we speak off the record?"

"Of course Dr. Franklin."

"Sir, do not trust Mr. Bester," Stephen chewed on his lip nervously. There had to be a way to warn the Captain of the danger without telling him everything, "I've heard things about Mr. Bester. The things he's involved in, the ways in which he makes arrests, the way he finishes his duties... he's connected sir. Connected to people who value results over all else."

The Captain's expression darkened, "I see."

"You need to talk with Susan or Garibaldi about Jason Ironheart. Don't bother searching the records for information about it, the entire event was classified and deleted from station records. Suffice it to say that Mr. Bester's methods are... questionable." Questionable was putting it lightly. There was little that Stephen could imagine being outside the realm of Mr. Bester's all inclusive amorality.

"I'm on it Doctor," The Captain nodded, "Just see about getting that medical data as fast as you can."

Stephen sighed and stared at the thick file to his left. The manilla folder overflowed with carbon copies and sticky notes, all written in his own inscrutable scrawl. The tab of the folder bore Danzig's name, written phonetically in Interlac so as to avoid confusion. It would be so easy to just give the folder over, answer all Captain Sheridan's questions and rid himself of the Psi Corps. Heck, he would just be conforming with the legal obligations of the CdC. It would be an easy sacrifice, nobody would judge Stephen for doing it.

Well nobody except Stephen himself.

It was a slippery slope from doing this to being in the biological weapons research dome on Earth in Geneva. Stephen hadn't entered medicine to do anything other than help people. He most certainly hadn't become a doctor so that his skills could be used for someone else's political gains, even his own. He was better than that.

Stephen took the file and tossed it in the wall safe, tapping in his own personal locking code and listening as the bolt slid into place. He was probably going to have to burn his records once he was done treating Danzig. He'd already taken the extra effort to keep everything as a paper copy, forgoing with making digital backups.

He wandered around the room, checking the condition of his patients. There were limits to even modern medicine's healing powers. He was constantly dealing with disease and death as well has healing and life.

At the far corner of the room Gazan sat next to his commander, perched on the edge of his stool with his arms crossed. He'd positioned himself to look as watchful as was possible, though from the way his head nodded with each breath Stephen knew the Imperial medic was dozing. The poor man had earned a bit of rest, he hadn't stopped monitoring Danzig's condition for a second since he'd brought to man to Stephen's medical ward.

Stephen leaned over the slowly rising chest of Danzig, pressing down on the Imperial man's sternum and feeling for cracks in the bone. Dazig yelped slightly in pain through his morphine haze, snapping Gazan out of his slumber. The man leapt to action, pulling Stephen away and brandishing a scalpel that he'd been concealing on his person.

"Woah, woah, woah," Stephen shoved Gazan away, "Take it easy! I'm trying to help him damn it."

The Imperial medic smiled sheepishly and muttered apologetically, placing the scalpel back upon the medical instruments tray. Stephen realized just how close to death he'd been. Gazan would have sliced his throat without a second thought if he'd only been a second slower. This situation needed to end. The Imperials and the Earth Alliance needed some sort of framework upon which to judge each other, preferably as equals.

He couldn't ethically provide Danzig's medical data, but there was no reason that it _had_ to be Danzig, "Come on Gazan. I need to see if I can get the damn ships translator working. I need to ask you a question."

Gazan cocked his head confusedly but followed Stephen, his head cocked in curiosity at Stephen's excited gestures.

* * *

John punched his authorization code into the monitor and waited as the Earthforce icon spun while the machine processed the data. Secure connections to Earth, especially unscheduled ones, took a long time. Hopefully Senator Hidoshi would still be at his desk, otherwise John would have to try to contact him through the Senator's private line. An invasion of privacy he'd wish to avoid.

John fiddled with the rank pins on his collar, trying to get the metal tabs on the back not to press into his adams apple, a nervous habit he'd picked up during the Earth Minbari war. The pins were a tactile memento of who he was and what he'd achieved. It was a reminder of all he had achieved and all he could achieve. He was Captain John fragging Sheridan and he wasn't about to let Imperials or the damn Psi Corps interfere with his station.

The icon chimed and the monitor blinked and was replaced with the placid features and mild expression of Senator Hidoshi. The Japanese man quirked and eyebrow and pointed towards John, "Captain Sheridan this is highly irregular, we aren't scheduled for a status update for another day at least."

"I realize that Senator," John's voice colored bashfully, "But something has come up, something that really cannot wait for the normal status update."

"I see," the senator nodded curtly and tapped his pen on the desk, chewing his lip in annoyance, "What is so urgent Captain?"

"It's the Imperials sir. There have been some recent difficulties," the senator's face fell and he swore. John frowned, "Is there something I'm missing senator?"

"Nothing you need to concern yourself with Captain Sheridan," the Senator scribbled on a scrap of paper, passing it to one of his aids without comment, "Please continue."

"Well Senator I hardly know where to begin. One of the Imperials got involved in a brawl that resulted in a number of deaths. I confronted the Ambassador over the hidden weapons he brought onto my station." John braced himself for the Senator's compulsive outrage.

"Captain Sheridan you are _not_ authorized to accuse foreign diplomats of criminal action without the expressed permission of either the President or the congressional oversight committee," Hidoshi's eyes narrowed in anger, tiny pinpricks of white visible between narrowed lids, "This is not acceptable."

"Senator the Inquisitor's man butchered six people and mauled more, including one of the Imperials. I'm sending a report to you with the particulars, I had more than sufficient evidence to render my duty to the station as military Governor," John paused. He was unsure how to continue, "That isn't why I called you Senator. The investigation of the Inquisitor has revealed new evidence about the physical nature and origins of the Imperials... frankly Senator I'm not sure how to proceed."

"You don't say." The Senator's face lit up in curiosity, "What is your new evidence?"

"Not to put too fine a point on it but they seem to think that they're human."

The Senator's pen clattered to the floor. The man blinked in bewilderment and shook his head. His mouth opened and closed, apparently sounding out the words in his own head to reconcile the sounds with their meanings, "They think that they're what?"

"Human Senator, they're at least humanoid once they take those ridiculous masks off. I've ordered Dr. Franklin to conduct some tests later today to confirm their claims but frankly sir I'm willing to take them at their world till I have proof to the contrary," John laughed, "I figure that if they'd been planning to pass themselves off as a 'brother race' like the Centauri did they wouldn't have spent so much time and effort making sure we couldn't see their faces."

"This is disquieting Captain Sheridan, if they're human where did they get that ship? That technology? How do several hundred thousand humans suddenly appear out of the blue?" The Senator shook his head, "And what do we do with them now?"

"You see the problems I've been going through," John shrugged, "I suppose some colony ship could have gotten picked up by a super advanced species and these humans could be the descendants of those colonists. I don't know, heck the Ambassador claimed his society had been in space for thirty thousand years."

"Men lie Captain Sheridan," Senator Hidoshi rolled his eyes, "Men who fear losing what they have lie more than most."

"Maybe Senator, but for the life of me I can't see the Ambassador lying about this. It just doesn't seem to fit him. Who knows, maybe the humans were only part of the society for a couple hundred of those thousands of years, they certainly seem to have enough species with them right now to believe that," John shrugged unsure of himself. The more he learned about the Imperials the less he felt like he knew them, "It's just a feeling I have but these people are so damn proud of their Empire. They don't seem to be making it up."

"John this couldn't possibly have come at a worse time. The president and security council are already a bit more gun happy at the moment than is probably wise," the Senator shook his head distressedly, massaging his temples. His oriental features muddled and wriggled in concentration, "The Shi'lassen Triumvirate is asking for military aid in fighting both a civil war and a extraterritorial invasion at the same time, in the same place."

"I thought the Senate already had a bill on the table about the Triumvirate," John tried to keep abreast of the Shi'lassen. He'd been involved in the mission that made first contact with the Shi'lassen and had served as a Earth Alliance military advisor to the Triumvirate on more than one occasion. The Shi'lassen were too stubborn to ask for aid unless they truly needed it, the situation must be dire for them to ask twice in one year.

"About the first request for aid yes, but the situation has become more fluid. Both factions of the Shi'lassen are asking for aid in fighting each other, and repelling the army of," Hidoshi hesitated and grudgingly said the word, "demons," before stopping himself embarrassedly.

"Demons sir?" John blinked in confusion, "The official request said they needed fighting demons?"

"Yes," Hidoshi shrugged, "Repeatedly, and in increasingly empathic descriptions of their demonic presence. We suspect the rebels may be embedding some sort of jamming device to scramble the Triumvirate codes and make them appear to be raving loons."

"Ah, I see," John nodded. It was exactly the sort of abstract, half cocked insanity he'd come accustomed to on Shi'lassen. The Shi'lassen were fond of roundabout solutions to simple problems, part of why he'd been assigned as a military advisor to them in the first place.

"We moved the vote for military intervention up to tonight. It's expected to pass by a wide margin."

"That's great Senator," John grinned grudgingly, "It doesn't solve my current problem though."

"What to do with the Imperials you mean?" Senator Hidoshi pondered the matter for a moment, "I will have to call a meeting of the security oversight council to deliberate on the matter." The security council was made up of the vice-president and a number of senator, presuming that all members were in Geneva at the moment, which was unlikely, it could be a matter of days, weeks, or even months before they came to a conclusion.

"We may not have that long Senator," John was sure Bester was already plotting his next move. The man practically exuded a cloud of greasy self-confidence, "There is a Psi Corps operative already here who's practically salivating at the prospect of being able to seize that ship and all her technology. If the Imperials turn out to be human I'm afraid he's going to commandeer my station under Psi Corps mandate and start a shooting war I don't think we can win."

"I understand Captain," The senator nodded, "Consider this a congressional order then. You are not to take any unprovoked aggressive action against the Imperial ship or the Imperial Ambassadorial mission. Do not cede your authority to anyone with less than a presidential order. I don't want some Psi Cop starting a war with the Babylon station. Is that understood?"

"Of course Senator," John smiled pleased with this outcome, "I'm glad you see it that way."

The doorbell to John's office chimed, buzzing angrily just at the corner of his hearing. The Senator looked down at the pile of paper's upon his desk in Geneva, "I won't keep you Captain."

"Thank you for your time Senator," John flicked off the monitor and sighed, still listening to the door chime buzz. Nothing was ever simple. John straightened his collar, reached up to tap his rank pins, and turned to answer the door.

* * *

Kerrigan walked down the hallway with an extra spring in her step, examining every bit of technology she could see. The station was an utter contradiction, the machines and computers used were wholly alien in their architecture and design but were so esthetically of human construction that they were indistinguishable from their Imperial counterparts in many regards. According to the historical information collected by the Inquisitor the Alliance had lived in stone age squalor some two thousand years prior. Yet in spite of this they'd managed to reach an astounding level of technological sophistication without access to any of the STC knowledge or Adeptus Mechanicus teachings.

It was as exciting as being back in the vaults of Oita with her private collection, perhaps even more so. It was certainly well worth the hassle of putting up with the armed men that followed them at a safe distance.

Not since the campaigns of Lord Solar Macharius crushed the world of Adrantis V had the Empire encountered a human civilization so advanced lacking any shred of the Dark Age of Technology. Hopefully they would manage to learn some of the curious sciences of the Alliance before the inevitable crusade fleet arrived to re-patriate the world into the greater sovereignty of the Empire.

"Mam'" The balding man leading the security team issued to keep them in check shook his head incredulously as she stopped to examine a particularly interesting bundle of curious circuits and wires in the ceiling, muttering with Tuul in binary about the elegantly simplistic architecture, "If you're going to stop every ten feet or so can we please do it somewhere out of the way? We're interrupting the flow of traffic." He waved to the ten or so xenos waiting impatiently for the Magos and her retinue to move out of their way.

Kerrigan tutted, scandalized at the Alliance human's suggestion that they rush the will o the Omnissiah. The ignorance of the Alliance about the proper sort of respect and deference that one ought to afford a Magos continued to astound her. She spoke in the vulgar language of the Alliance, grudgingly allowing the illogical mess of borrowed vocabulary and irregular verbs to pass her lips, "The will of the Omnissiah is not something that can be rushed. We must wait for his will to show its self to us. I will not let some station serf distract me from my duties." She waved him away disinterestedly.

"Serf," the balding man squawked. He crossed his arms and glared at her with hawkish eyes over his oblong nose, "Listen lady I don't know who the heck you think you are but we're going to come to an understanding, here and now." He walked up to her and prodded the badge shaped like a target over the breast of his uniform, "This badge means that I'm head of station security. No ifs, ands or buts about it. On this station I'm responsible for law and order. Anyone who does anything to disturb that law and order, well just start getting this itchy feeling that won't go away till someone's been arrested. Now you're standing in the way of about a half dozen angry people who are getting all manner of angry that you keep stopping in the doorway to take a peek at every dang thing in the universe. You wanted to access a public data terminal and see the station. I'll take you to see a public data terminal and tour the station but I am not going to stand around for this sightseeing tour of nowhere. You get my point?"

The two oversized servitor constructs moaned angrily in warning as he got in Kerrigan's face. He rounded on the and prodded them in the chest, "Listen you big palooka. I don't care how big you are, I'm the one with the PPG and the badge. So shut up and walk on the tour like a good Frankenstein ok? I don't need nonsense from you as well."

Tuul and Bheal looked to each other, sniggering in warbling binary. Trying to reason with a servitor was as much of a waste of breath as speaking to a wall. Most dogs had higher reasoning skills. Kerrigan smiled and tried to reason with the clearly dysfunctional man, "Officer I haven't got the slightest clue what you want."

"Garibaldi"

"Pardon?"

"My name is Garibaldi. If you're going to try to talk to me like an infant at least get my name right when you make the cooing noises to calm me down," he pointed down the hallway, "Now shut up and go."

"I will do no such thing," She shook her head, mechandrites flopping amusedly from side to side as her cheeks crinkled into a vestigial smile, "And do stop poking my servitors. They haven't got a clue what you're doing and it would be best not to activate a defensive response. They are a bit overzealous even if they aren't capable of higher thought."

"Look lady they might be dumb but they can't be that dumb."

"They're lobotomized Mr. Garibaldi," Kerrigan sighed, "I personally cut out the part of their minds that creates independent thought. Suffice it to say that short of a miracle I don't foresee them listening to your orders."

"You... preformed lobotomies," he pointed at the two servitors, "You preformed lobotomies on _them."_

"Yes, though they aren't some of my better work, Ogryn are easy to work with as a template but they're difficult properly alter. Too many redundancies in their brain structure," She shook her head and continued with her clinical diagnosis, "You have to start the process while they're still in puberty and slowly remove more and more of the brain so as to alter their psyche without damaging the natural growth cycle."

Garibaldi's face contorted in disgust and his eye twitched, "Just get moving Magos. Now."

"Really Mr. Garibaldi this is totally unacceptable," Kerrigan hadn't even had the chance to auspex scan the circuits, "I must protest."

"Protest on the way," Garibaldi started walking down the hallway motioning for her to follow. He shook his balding head and cajoled the servitors forwards, "It will give us something to talk about as we go."

Much to her surprise Kerrigan actually found herself to be following the security chief's forced march, her feel falling in step with the security chief in spite of herself. Her apprentices rushed to catch up, their tools, icons, mechandrites and augmentics skittering along the deck in a sonorous clattering kerfuffle. It was not the dignified procession Kerrigan would have preferred. The boy, Abbas, rushed behind her as close as he dared, waving a decanter of incense and muttering what little of the payers of computational purity he'd learned. His comprehension Martian gothic left a great deal to be desired.

She winced as he unintentionally conjugated _teaoaki_, the martian word for wisdom, as _teoakim_, the martian word for a type of canned beef. She really would have to get around to helping the poor dear learn the proper way of going about things so that Tuul would stop sniggering every time he tired to say "bring us the wisdom of the Omnissiah."

"Officer Garibaldi how much longer shall you be marching us down this hallway before you intend to allow me to conduct the examinations the Omnissiah requires," Kerrigan growled at the balding man as they rounded yet another corner and entered a wide space filled with xenos of all sorts mingling and chatting around a number elegant tables. Kerrigan swallowed in discomfort, glad for the presence of her servitors. She was unaccustomed to this level of proximity to xenos in a lab settling, let alone a social one.

"We're here little miss gadget, don't you worry," He walked over to one of the tables and pressed a button. A screen rose from the center of the table displaying a rotating image of the station heraldry, "This is a public access data terminal. It should give you any information that isn't classified to civilians. It ought to be more than sufficient for what you're doing."

Kerrigan eyed the machine suspiciously, looking over it's layout of runes and symbols by which one communed with the machine. It seemed straightforward enough, "Are there any special rituals necessary to appease the spirits of your logic engine I ought to know about it? Songs? Prayers? Incantations? Runes of access?"

The officer quirked an eyebrow, amusedly chewing on his lip, "Just tell it what you're looking for. I'm sure you'll find it."

"I'll be the judge of that," Kerrigan raised her hand to the data port and extended a fine mechandirte tendril. It slithered out to the data port on the side of the monitor, shifting and altering its architecture to interface with the Alliance machine. Kerrigan felt a jolt of electricity and found herself floating around within the user interface of the station.

She moved around clumsily within the foreign data-stream, her own engrams struggling to comprehend the complex foreign coding. However no matter how complex a user interface may be all machines ultimately communicated in the same language, the universal language of binary. Mighty though the station's mind may be, eventually she would discover it's secrets.

The realms of the machine spirits was not a true physical space with recognizable geography or physical laws, however the human mind would interpret the digital space in terms of imagined geography and structure. A large archive of data might appear as a wide library or perhaps vast tome with infinite pages depending upon the creativity and experience of the tech-priests in question. The truly advanced of the Magos Adeptus Cognitas could force the digital environments to conform to their desired shape and form.

The space Kerrigan found herself in was a formless mass of smoke and blackness as she struggled to interpret the elaborate coding encryption of the Alliance ship. Thin spidery paths of data arced in all directions, weaving an inscrutable road of knowledge.

She typed each rune along the machine's interface, listening as the machine responded to the strings of information. She typed basic searches though the database, simple mathematics, scientific principles, and language each bit of data entered she learned a bit more. With each morsel of knowledge learned she shifted through the data-stream less clumsily. It was like learning to walk all over again. Her retinue recited the sermon of the Iron Spirits to speed her progress, begging the favor of the Omnissiah.

Finally, gloriously, in a bout of clarity and understanding the dam broke and she could comprehend the machine's language. The silvery paths spread, cutting a path through the smoke and darkness. She was standing in a small forest of self contained machine minds living within isolated bubbles of knowledge. The machine minds of these interfaces were weak, barely above those of animals. Simple instinctual creations designed to respond to direct stimulus, the were incapable of thoughts more complex than those input within them directly. She felt them grumbling and growling as they completed their menial tasks, fetching data and serving their users.

Far in the distance she could feel the greater mind of the station, calling to her, beaconing and tantalizing in the distance. It was a great beacon of shadowed light, still cloaked in the fog of the unknown. She jumped forward eagerly, stopping abruptly as she collided with the an invisible force. She cursed silently to herself. It was a firewall.

She reached out and tried to push at the wall, searching for a way to decrypt it. It was impossible. The coding was still to alien to her, the spirits could not be entreated to let her pass. Brute force wouldn't serve her here.

"A test," she chuckled to herself, "A little game of the Ominissiah to prove my worth. Ha! Very well. I accept!" She reached out in all directions, poking and prodding the bubble, testing for weakness. It flexed when she hit it, moving around her attack rather than meeting it. It grabbed greedily for her when she pulled herself away from it. Whoever invoked this spirit of protection ought to be proud.

Still the spirit, like most of its kind, was an imperfect one. The bubble round her own data terminal was strong but not uniform. Small cracks within the firewall allowed usage tracking records to be recorded in a secure location, possibly the same location the spirit who ran the station resided. She waked for a moment when the spirit was distracted by incoming data and took her chance.

Kerrigan followed a narrow path of sliver light, squeezing through the hole in the bubble and soaring past hundreds of other bubbles hiding data terminals. She felt like she were being buffeted along the rapids, the turns and shifts of her chosen data path yanked and jerked around firewalls and password gateways.

It yanked her and dragged her to a massive repository of data. Stacked round her in orderly piles were piles of data. Records, orders, ideas, and mistakes all tied into neat packages and stacked chronologically. She reached towards one of the stacks and recoiled as the chains round it lashed out against her, whipping out to strangle her to death. She dodged and continued along the path, the chains still whipping out impotently at her as she sped down the path. The spirit shards protecting the station's secrets were aggressive but not malevolent. It spoke well of the tech adepts of the alliance. Properly attentive spirits were hard to maintain with any real focus.

She swam deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ship's data-stream, shifting from stack to stack in curiosity. She dared not test the security again for fear of angering the station's spirits. The chains grew thicker and thicker around the stacks of data the farther into the bowels of the ships memory she went till she finally reached a massive pillar of nearly sacked data at the end of the ship's data-stream. It was not wrapped in chains but still sat immobile, black with disuse and age.

The many thousands of data streams all spun around this one pillar of data but none of them connected with it. It stood silent and slumbering at the heart of the ship, a black column pitted with a single closed eyelid. Her curiosity insatiably piqued Kerrigan floated over to the great pillar and touched it lightly, probing at the data within.

She examined it closely, keenly interested in the slumbering spirit's condition. Why would such a powerful spirit be slumbering? Had it been injured? Yes, yes it had. A large section of the spirit had become deeply fragmented somehow, cutting it from the ship bodily. Feeble tendrils of the machine waved weakly in the direction of other data of the ship, impotently waving and wandering.

"Unacceptable," Kerrigan tutted disappointedly. She caressed the pillar lovingly, "Don't you worry child, I will heal your wounds as best I may." The broken chain of data was written in Alliance code but she could repair the broken chain with a program of her own making. She weaved the broken strands with threads of knowledge, borrowing a spirit shard of imperial make and binding it to the great pillar. The connection glowed warmly as information inundated the pillar.

She kissed the pillar lovingly, sharing the secrets of decoding data encrypted by the spirit shard with the great pillar. A complicated mess of thoughts and feelings struck her and she struggled to pull back as the pillar did its best to consume her. She flung herself backwards and away from the pillar, wincing as it tore scraps of data greedily from her memory engrams.

The digital space shook as the inky black film covering the pillar shook away, revealing a blue surface covered an elaborate golden tattooing of circuitry that sparkled and glimmered with each packet of data. The scales dropped from the pillar's great eye and it spun in it's socket confusedly, eventually focusing on the Magos. It let out a piercing bellow of rage and glared at her.

It dawned upon her that she had just awakened a injured spirit of a military station that very likely could not speak her language. It had perhaps been premature to heal it.

Kerrigan turned to flee back down the data-stream and return to her own body but a tight firewall blocked her path, trapping her with the now open eye of the pillar. Chains, like those binding the stacks of data, whipped out and grabbed her round the neck. She stared into the pillar's massive cornea in horror, spectral hands fighting feebly with the steel wrapped about her person.

"By the Omnissiah," Kerrigan whispered to herself, "What have I awakened."

The great eye shifted back and forth before focusing on her. It squinted at her and blinked twice and spoke in a oily, sour voice, "Hey doll. You want to tell me who the heck you are and what a dame like you is doing in a restricted data archive."

"I am Magos Frist. Keeper of the Archives of Oita, seeker of the lost, keeper of the secrets arts of the Omnissiah," Kerrigan tried to square her shoulders and glare at the eye however it proved to be somewhat of a futile gesture considering that her insubstantial form had neither shoulders to square nor eyes to glare with.

"Great for you," the pillar's eye rolled disinterestedly in its socket as the pillar spread tendrils round the data stacks, scrutinizing them lazily, "Now you want to tell me what the hell you're doing in an Earth Alliance restricted data pool."

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to take it on faith that it was an accident?" Kerrigan tried lamely.

The pillar chuckled, "No. I wouldn't."

"I was looking for the spirit the governed the machine minds of this station," Kerrigan admitted. The spirits of the machine often communicated with the user but she'd never encountered a spirit so articulate or dangerously self-aware, "It see if it passes muster as being worthy of the Omnissiah's love."

"The omin...onmi... the what's love?" The eye narrowed in confusion. Wrinkly black streams of data stretched and pinched in confusion.

"The god from which all machines come to mankind."

"Great," it snorted amusedly, "A religious nut. Just what I need."

"Please great spirit," Kerrigan prostrated herself before the pillar, "I have come to seek knowledge of you and understanding so that I may judge if you are in keeping with the teachings of the Omnissiah. It was I who healed you when you were injured."

"Healed me," the pillar stopped confusedly. A piercing grinding noise filled the digital space as it searched its records, "Sonova... you reactivated me with... what in the hell is that coding? It's written like it was designed by a schizophrenic... Lady you've got issues."

"Spirit," Kerrigan stood and yanked the slackened chain from her throat, "What is thy name?"

"Hoy vey. Look lady, if you've got to keep this act up could you do it somewhere else? Seriously I've got better things to do with my day," the pillar blinked in confusion, "Like figuring out this nightmare of a OS patch you programed into me."

"Please spirit I entreat thee. Let me learn of thy making."

The eye blinked nonplussed and sat in silence for a few moments before rolling in it's socket and sighing in disbelief, "You have got to be kidding me... you waltz in my OS without clearance, just start messing with a military grade AI, activate the aforementioned AI without clearance, and on top of that expect me to provide a foreign national with information about a military stations secure servers. Nope! Not gonna happen. Bu-bye. Don't let the door hit you on the way out"

"Wait!" Kerrigan shouted, "We really must!" However a yank at her navel propelled her back into her own body jerking her back into reality. She smacked the side of the monitor in frustration, "No wait damn you! Please wait."

Garibaldi's security detail looked at her in confusion and she got ahold of herself. Oh good grief she almost certainly looked entirely insane. She'd gone from standing still and using a data terminal to screaming in desperation and smacking the monitor in what could not have been more than five minutes.

The intercom on the table crackled and a familiar arrogant voice echoed from it, "So doll, did I pass muster with the Omnissiah or do we go for round two?"

Garibaldi looked down at the intercom in confusion, "What in the heck?"

Kerrigan sighed, "The spirit of your station is more opinionated than I expected."

* * *

Susan just barely managed to talk the Drazi out of having the station population of green and purple Drazi following behind them. It seemed that neither the green nor the purple factions trusted each other to be alone with Galut. The broad shouldered Drazi shot each other mistrustful glares and hissed territorially but did not attack each other. Galut's threats of violence on any Drazi who attacked another one apparently cowed the lot of them.

A small honor guard of Drazi wearing green and purple sashes walked on either side of the hallway, providing a protective retinue for the happily giggling imperial giant as Susan walked him back to the Ambassador's quarters. His beloved stuffed rabbit was strapped firmly to his chest with two unassuming bands of cloth, one green and one purple. It's floppy ears waved too and fro smacking the sides the mask of his faceplate.

Susan's leg twinged as she hobbled along the hallway, leading the way to the Ambassadorial suite. Galut was apparently having some small difficulty in containing his excitement at the prospect of being re-united with the Ambassador.

Galut giggled wetly and clapped his hands together, humming a nonsense tune of random vulgar words he liked in English and Imperial. Exactly how someone "bottle _shkkreted_ sideways _femma_ fun time," she wasn't sure but Galut clearly had strong opinions on the subject.

"Come on Galut," Susan hobbled forward eagerly. Much as she liked the Imperial and was grateful for his help with the Drazi she was more than ready to wash her hands of the entire Imperial mess. John's standing order to detain the Imperials until further notice was a welcome sign of progress.

"Come on Galut," the giant had gotten distracted by a passing Vree's silvery mirrored shirt. The wide eyed Vree blinked in confusion as the Imperial leaned backwards and forwards, watching his reflection shift on the cloth, "The apartments are just around the bend."

A handful of security officers wandered the hallway wearing full riot gear and expressions of unparallelled boredom. Zack Allan, one of Garibaldi's most trusted agents, stood across from the door flipping a coin and whistling to himself. When he noticed Susan walking towards him the coin dropped to the floor with a noisy clink as he rushed to salute her.

"At ease," Susan nodded to the closed door, "Has the Ambassador done anything since John met with him."

"No mam," Zach bent down and picked the coin off the floor. He pocketed it and pointed at his watch, "We haven't heard anything from the Ambassador in about an hour."

"But he there?" Galut grumbled nervously, "He be there?"

"Yeah big guy, that is unless he can walk through walls. Him the cyborg and the one that twitches all the time," Zach eyed the columns of Drazi, "You gonna explain the fan club?"

"It's a long story Zack. Garibaldi can fill you in later for now just be grateful they aren't beating each other up any more," Susan shook her head and leaned on her crutches, "Galut resolved the situation."

"Galut fix good," the giant giggled and slapped his hand against his chest. Susan flinched as the massive hand swiped past the back of her head, catching a few stray hairs and yanking them out.

"Ok big guy," Zack chuckled.

The giant stared at the door, grumbling fearfully. He rubbed his hands together worriedly and groaned a high pitched whine of fear as he bounced on the balls of his feet. He hugged the rabbit firmly and pleaded with Susan, "You tell Hilder what a good job Galut do?"

"Galut I told you three times already, I promise to tell the Ambassador just how much help you were and just how much you helped the station," Susan comforting patted Galut's arms, thick as tree-trunks, and cooed soothingly, "It's ok Galut. You did a good job."

"Speaking of the Ambassador," Zack's knuckles popped as he made a fist with his right hand and rapped it against the wall absentmindedly, "You know that ISN is going to be a nightmare for the next couple of days. We're going to have to post additional guards throughout most of blue and green sectors once we get the results of the test."

"ISN hopefully won't get wind of this too early," Susan cringed at the thought of the media circus. They'd been gossiping wildly about the Imperials for close to a month now. God almighty, if they realized that their absurd speculations that the Imperials were in fact secretly human were true it would be a nightmare of every wingnut with a camera, "We've been very discrete about the subject."

Zack rolled his eyes and shifted his jaw, clicking it loudly in its socket with each movement, "Commander _you _might be being discrete but nobody passed the message to the Imperials, the Ambassador walked through the Zoccalo without his helmet on in order to get here. If the whole station doesn't know what we know what's going on with the Imperials and us better than you or I do I'll eat my shoe."

"Ugh," Susan flinched at the thought of the inevitable flurry Ambassadors, reporters, politicians and other slack jawed morons who would no doubt inundate her with questions as soon as she returned to her office, "Come on Galut let's get you home, I've got work to do."

Susan pressed the door chime for the Ambassador's suite and came face to face with the beaked lizard-man the Inquisitor traveled with. The Lizard-man chittered brightly, cocked his head and stared at her with a single milky yellow eye. The alien sniffed the air amusedly and warbled in amusement, whistling and twittering amusedly in the Imperial language.

Galut laughed loudly and slapped his own chest. Susan caught the words 'strong' and 'fun' in the Imperial language. Galut had taught her those words, apparently because he wanted her to be able to properly explain how strong he was and how much fun they'd had together. The idea that her fellow Earth Alliance officers were unable to speak the Imperial language and thus wouldn't understand the words to be impressed by then had apparently been lost on him.

The lizard-man crooned amusedly, looking at Susan, "I suppose the broken one wishes to come in to the room. Good, prey so rarely rarely declares itself," he stepped out of the way, "Well come then girl. Need you, the Ogryn will."

Susan ignored the lizard-man's morbid humor and wandered into the room. The Ambassador, still somewhat groggy eyed, ambled out of his bedroom, flanked as always by Skitarii Thross. Susan had almost been convinced John was playing a prank on her when he'd called her over the link to warn her that the Imperials were possibly human.

However Daul Hilder was, though handsome in a sort of rugged and haggard way, astoundingly and unremarkably human looking. If the Imperials weren't human they were damn close. Something was off though, the Ambassador's gaze was slightly glassy and his gait slower and more cautious than she'd seen before. He stumbled slightly over his own coat as he ambled over to Susan.

Susan blinked in surprise. He was drunk. Not just drunk, absolutely sloshed out of his mind. His pupils were dialated and his breath stank of liquor.

He smiled and started to slur, "Greetings Commander," in his patois however upon seeing Galut in the room the Ambassador lost all pretense of interest in the commander, stormed past her, and got up into Galut's personal space yelling incoherently. Sparks of psychic discharge flared from his hands as he shoved at the giant angrily, flaring and sputtering on cool steel of the deck plates.

Galut sobbed sadly and muttered what sounded like an apology, over and over again. The Ambassador continued shoving Galut, slurring angrily shouted epitaphs in apoplectic fury. His coats waved wildly with every push, scrolls and icons jangling at his belt. The Drazi standing outside the door panicked at tried to intervene but the Ambassador flung him out of the room with a single flick of the wrist and slammed the doors shut with a second. The muffled sounds of shouting and beating fists echoed off the thick door.

Susan hobbled between the Ambassador and Galut, shielding the terrified giant with her body. Susan gaged at the smell, he was practically sweating liquor, "Ambassador what in the hell do you think you're doing. I will not allow you to do this."

The Ambassador was not impressed.

Susan tumbled to the ground as the back of his hand collided with the bridge of her nose, upending her on her crutches and tossing her to the ground on top of her already injured leg. Her nose bled profusely, filling her mouth with the acrid taste of copper. Susan lay on the ground, temporarily unable to move.

The Ambassador screamed "Qua eratan du?" and raised his arm, lifting the giant into the air effortlessly and smacking him into the ceiling. Galut sobbed dejectedly and feebly stumbled over his own words, still trying to articulate what he'd been doing with Susan and Michael with his limited vocabulary. He looked down at her from the ceiling at stared her in the eyes, "Please tell how Gault did good. Please tell!"

"Ambassador please get ahold of yourself," Susan looked to the Skitarii and the lizard-man in the hopes that one of them might intervene on Galut's behalf. The two of them stood stock still, staring at what was happening in morbid shock. Neither was willing to move to stop the ambassador.

The Ambassador dropped the giant to the ground with a wave of his hand, then lifted him up again, again and again and again. The lizard-man's mastiff children barked and snapped excitedly at the rapidly moving man as he bounced from floor to ceiling, terrified and bawling.

Galut kept sobbing and screaming, "Tell! Please tell!" with increasing intensity each time he collided with the ground in with a bone crushing thud, then lifted levitated back into the air. His already crooked nose was smashed beyond recognition.

"Stop dammit," Susan lifted herself to her feet and grabbed the Inquisitor by the front of his shirt and breaking his concentration, pulling herself in close enough to smell the stink of whiskey on the Ambassador's breath, "Why are you doing this? What could he have done to deserve this?"

"This does not concern you," the Ambassador slurred out angrily as he shoved her away, "What I do with my property is my business."

"Property?" Susan's blood boiled with fury as she looked at Galut. The giant sat on the ground, rocking back and forth with his knees held up to his chest, holding the fluffy stuffed rabbit with all his might. Its stitches looked fit to burst, "Galut is a person. He is a living person not some damn toy you can bounce off the walls."

"I own his life. I own him. He is mine," the Ambassador snatched the Rabbit out of Galut's hands. The giant screamed as though the Ambassador had taken away his actual child, "His duty is pledged to me, his property," he waved the rabbit, "Is mine."

He smiled coldly and raised his left hand, the palm fulled with bright blue flames that hissed and sizzled above his hand, "The right doing of punishment is _mine_." Galut got to his knees and pleaded as he realized what Daul planned to do to the his beloved bugs. Thick sausage like fingers clawing desperately at the hem of Hilder's coat.

"This is my property too," Susan raised her PPG and pointed it between the Ambassador's eyes. The plasma charge whirred angrily in the barrel, "Guess which what my property is going to do to you if you damage yours."

"This isn't your place girl," The Ambassador growled, "Do you believe you can kill me before I harm you? _Put down the gun_" His voice reverberated and she felt something in the back of her head, a powerful pressure like altitude sickness. She wanted, no, she _needed _ to put down her gun. She couldn't imagine why she'd considered holding it in the first place.

No. No this wasn't right, she recognized this feeling. No, that wasn't right she recognized a feeling like it. Not as overpowering or as hostile to be sure, but her mother had often jumped into the back of Susan's mind. This insufferable bastard was in her _mind_.

"No! Get out of my head," Susan screamed and lashed out, unintentionally striking back at the Ambassador. Her own weak tendril probing into the Ambassador's mind, feebly lashing against the great walls and iron towers protecting his thoughts. She struck the barrier furiously and felt it gave way in astonishment. The liquor, it must be the liquor.

Susan plowed on through his mind, feeling blindly through the foreign thoughts and bizarre language. She grabbed a bubble of ideas as she was shaken back into the real world by a firm set of hands, holding her down to the floor. Cool metallic fingers biting at the meat of her arm.

Thross glared her in the eyes, shaking his head slowly and holding a knife above her throat with one of his tentacles. Thross raised the knife into the air and stabbed downward. The razor sharp blade collided with flesh agonizingly slicing through skin and bone.

Susan cried out in horror as she stared at the knife blade protruding from Galut's hand. The Ogryn had tossed himself between Susan and Cairn, shielding her throat with one of his broad hands. He growled angrily at Thross and grabbed the Skitarii by the front of his robes, "Don't hurt Susan. Do wut' you want but don't hurt Susan."

"Galut," Susan could have cried, "You don't have to do this. You don't have to put up with this."

"Yes," Galut said sadly as he took off his helmet, revealing his face. He wasn't anyone's idea of pretty. His face was squashed and twisted as though it had been hit with a frying pan, further marred by cuts and bruises from being bounced by the Ambassador. He smiled kindly with a mouth of crooked teeth, wet and pink with his own blood, "I do."

Ambassador Hilder scowled, looming over Galut in spite being substantially shorter than the giant. Thick meaty tears filled Galut's eyes as he stared at the rabbit in Daul's hands, "Bossman please. Hurt me cuz' I did da wrong thing, but don't hurt bugs... he didn't do nothing wrong." He pulled the green and purple sashes off his chest and held them out, "I'll give you green n' my purple just don't hurt bugs."

"What is wrong with you? He's barely more than a giant child," Susan snarled at the Ambassador in hatred. He was a disgusting creature, "Are you such a monster that you hurt children as well?"

Everyone in the room stopped talking and stared at her in astonishment. The Ambassador's eyes snapped back into focus, apparently shocked into sobriety. Susan coughed confusedly, "Am I missing something?"

"Thross," the Ambassador said icily, "Let her go." The cyborg relaxed his grip and helped Susan to her feet. Susan hobbled over to the bar and leaned up against the edge, weakly propping herself up against the bar. She stood there, not trusting herself to do more than just breathe for fear of collapsing in exhaustion.

Ambassador Thross held Bugs up in and offered the rabbit to Galut. The giant nervously took the toy back and hugged it to his breast, hiding it behind a knotted mess of muscles. He stared into the wide face of the ogryn and spoke in clipped tones, "If you ever run away from protecting an Imperial citizen from a xenos attack me burning your toy will be the _least_ of your worries," he turned to the Jak, "Take him to the station's infirmary and get his hands and face stitched up. And make sure he visits Danzig while he's there," he prodded Galut in the chest, "I want you to see what you are responsible for."

Galut rubbed at his face, wiping it clean of tears, "Thank you bossman. Thank you." He handed the green and purple sashes over to Ambassador Hilder. The Ambassador wrapped the two sashes about his wrist dismissively, and waved the Ogryn out of the room. Jak ushered Galut out of the room, as a mess of Drazi and security officers burst in.

Thross moved in Susan's direction, stopping abruptly as Zack aimed a whining plasma rifle his direction, the gun sights clicking loudly as the weapon locked on. Zack shook his head firmly, "Don't move a fragging muscle."

The Kroot grabbed his hounds by the scruff of their necks to stop them from charging. The hounds struggled against his grip snapping and snarling, beaked mouths foaming up in excitement. Vira'capac stared at Zach unflinchingly, his third lid closing and unclosing over his yellow eyes compulsively.

"You leave me in an awkward position Commander Ivanova," the Ambassador picked up Ivanova's pistol off the ground and crushed it in his balled fist, ignoring the newcomers. It burst in a small pocket of purple lighting, scattering parts across the floor, "Now I must decide what to do with you."

"Do with me?" Susan laughed contemptuously, "You should be more worried about what my government does to you. I have half a mind to toss you to the Psi Corps myself and let them do exactly what you deserve to have happen to you."

"Ah yes, your rural attempt at the Black Ships. Your enforcers are somewhat less intimidating that the Sisters of Silence I fear," The Ambassador chuckled, "No Commander I do not believe that will be acceptable. You are an untrained psycher, an especially dangerous one."

"I don't appreciate you're accusations," Susan snarled, her eyes flitting to Zack in horror. Would he believe the Ambassador? Would he tell?, "You won't change the subject that quickly Ambassador."

"Really? Perhaps you'd prefer to discuss the finer points of the Metzik Gothic we've been talking in?"

"What are you?" Dear god, he was right. The sounds Susan was making weren't English, she hadn't even noticed that she'd been speaking in another language it felt as natural as Russian. It was the same awkward rumbling mess of vowels and consonants spoken by the Imperials.

"You have been inside my head, seen my mind, gained knowledge that you should not have, possibly knowledge no person should have. You're weak now but I cannot know what knowledge you've taken. Even a weak psychic can cause destruction on a level beyond comprehension," The Ambassador shook his head, tangled grey locks of hair flopping about dejectedly. His gaze quivered with a powerful sadness, small sparks still flickering in the pits of his eyes and flipped back into English. This patois flowed as elegantly as ever, "No, now that you've seen what you've seen I can never let you go Commander."

"Hey butthead," Zach turned his rifle towards the Ambassador, "Do you honestly think I'm going to let you get away with this? There's no way I'm not going to stop you. The Captain is going to boot your butts to the curb when he hears about this."

"Child, none of you are even going to remember this happened," bright yellow flames flickered about the Ambassador's eyes. He interlocked his fingers, joints popping wetly. He growled angrily in a voice that echoed and reverberated overpoweringly demanding obedience, "Now _put down the weapons and sit down."_

* * *

"Throne above but it is hot," Ami wiped her sides, hoping she wouldn't sweat through the silk of her dress. The reconstructed section of the ship was inordinately humid in her opinion. The Belzafesters preferred a hotter and thicker atmosphere than was the ship standard for most decks. Ami wiped the sweat from her brow and smiled politely as Doan Raul hobbled over to her.

The displaced Belzafester had refused to receive a prosthetic replacement for this missing leg, believing it's loss to be a retribution from the Emperor for past sins. He smiled toothily and waved with the arm not holding a crutch, "Good to see you lass. How goes your father."

"Well as always Doan," Ami smiled, "How goes the recovery?"

"Belzafest lives lass. Belzafest lives, we may not have taken her with us but our home lives on with us." He scratched at the stubble about his throat. The skin was scarred and calloused where the gas mask had protected his face from the poisonous atmosphere of Belzafest. Most of the Belzafesters had the same horseshoe shaped scar about their chin and neck, "Come Lass I'll show you what we've done. Your sisters are waiting already."

"Really," Ami hadn't expected to see them down here, "Which ones?"

"The redhead who laughs at jokes nobody made, the blonde who bats her eyes at anything that stands still long enough and the horse faced bitch of a girl convinced she's smarter than everyone else," Doan was a man of few words, fewer courtesies, and no lies. It was somewhat difficult to get used to.

"Arda, Aryana, and Carran would probably resent being referred to like that Doan. Well perhaps not Carran, but that's only because nobody's had the opportunity to prove her wrong as of yet," Ami chuckled politely, "I do wonder how you refer to me in private."

"About the same as I refer to you in public," Doan grunted, "A prissy brat who japes at old cripples. Now are we going to head into the center or am I going to have to club you over the head with my crutch and drag you there."

Ami snorted with amusement, there was no real scorn for her in Doan. Gruffness and rudeness was simply his way, it was when he stopped spending the effort to be rude to you at all that you needed to worry. The two of them walked along the wide hallway of the Belzafester's section. Ami tired not to think too hard about the people who'd previously lived in that part of the ship, it used to be a thriving sector of merchants and artisans. They'd died to a man in the battle of Belzafest, a fact that had apparently not been lost on the Belzafesters. They'd just short of sainted the lost crewmen, going so far as to keep photos of them on the door of their household or shop.

Ami was pleased to see that the Damascan crew mingling with the Belzafesters, mingling, shopping their wares, and eating their strange-spiced dishes. There were not as many as she would have liked, but change took time.

"You're gawking lass," Doan grunted, "I know you're here to observe our progress an' report it to your father but it might be a wise choice to be a wee bit less obvious about it."

"You know that isn't fair Doan," Ami shook her head exasperatedly, "And if you think my father resorts to such painfully obvious methods of spying on his own crew."

"If you say so," His aged and cracked face quirked in amusement as he stared at the half circle of men Ami's eye's kept straying towards, "Then again perhaps I am mistaken. Come to eye the beautiful young boys of Belzafest eh? Well no man can blame you for that."

Ami blushed and denied it fervently but her mind did stray to the broad shouldered and ivory skinned soldiers of Belzafest. They were so decidedly different from the more lithe and olive skinned Belzafest natives or the swarthy skinned, almond-eyed Amon. Their hair was short and beads were shaved like the Lionhearts, "I haven't a clue what you're talking about Doan."

"You may be of noble blood Ami Sáclair but you are still a maid of sixteen," Doan ducked through the low door of the apartments that now served as the provisional Belzafest government in exile, "Perhaps I should adopt the Damascan tradition of marrying more than one wife. I daresay I'm the handsomest man in all of Belzafest." He grinned widely, stretching his many scars and wrinkles to emphasize the point.

Ami giggled and followed him into the wide, smoke filled apartment, "I think your wife might object."

Doan leaned on his crutch, waggled his eyebrows, and said in an exaggerated whisper the whole room could hear, "Nay lass, what Rual don't know won't hurt her."

A wide hipped and wide figured woman sidled up behind Doan and smacked him soundly about the ears and face, "No you old letch but it might well hurt you. Shameless flirt you are, wasting this poor girls time. What would you do with her if you had her?" She glared angrily at Doan, but her eyes were sparkling with laughter.

Doan smiled back at his half-heartedly glaring wife, "Suppose' you're right Rual, anyhow there's no man what can serve two masters."

"You can barely serve one as is," Rual smacked him playfully across the back of the head, "Now get back to work on that damn stove. Your son Bael has fixed most of the pipes but for the life of him can't figure out the gas lines."

"A man's work is never done," Doan sighed, "Well lass it looks like our date is at an end. Back to the circle of crones with you." He ducked and hobbled into the kitchen as Rual took another swing at him.

"I'll show you who's a crone you gimp bastard," Rual yelled at Doan's retreating back. They were an odd couple to be sure, but there was no malice in their fighting. Rual wiped her hands on the front of her apron and put her hands on her hips, "I suppose you're here for the same as the others the eh? Come to check and see how we're progressing?"

"I'm just here to see what can be done to help you along," Ami said placatingly bowing her head.

Rual snorted, "I'm not a noblewoman even if I am the head of the Circle. No bowing to me lass, you know full well that I take orders the same one as you."

"I thought the Belzafester's had pledged themselves to the service of Inquisitor Daul," Ami said confusedly rubbing her hands together.

"I believe that's what I said lass," Rual nodded, "I take orders from the same person what you do."

"I serve my father the Lord Captain Sáclair," Ami puffed up her chest and stared up at the hard faced Belzafest woman. Rual was unimpressed by her attempt to mimic the stony glare her father used to cow unruly officers.

"And he takes orders from Daul, or will do so for the next forty nine years," Rual shook her head amusedly, "Now are you going to follow me to the Circle or are you going to stand there nattering about who is in charge." She did not wait for Rual to respond before turning around and heading to the back room.

The may have lost their home but the Belzafester's still clung to their culture tooth and nail. The Circle was the ruling body back on Belzafest, it was now down to twelve members rather than it's previous membership of three hundred but they still served as the elected leaders of the Belzafest peoples. The pale dozen sat at a low round table, sipping at frothy tankards. The smell fermented honey and hops was overpowered only by the thick fog of talbac from the pipes both the men and women puffed at contentedly. A half dozen of the _Endless Bounty's _ crew sat at the table as well, though without ale or pipes. Sergei Mammud of the Lionhearts, two of her sisters, and a trio of men in the uniforms of security officers.

Her eldest sister sat at the large round table, towering over the Belzafesters. It seemed to Ami that Carran had willed herself taller than the rest of the world just so she could look down on it. Her sister's taciturn disposition and scornful manner had always rankled her as a child. She loved her sister dearly, but she wasn't altogether convinced that she liked the woman. In reality Ami was pretty sure that she hated Carran. She'd taken to participating in the Belzafest government meetings almost as much as the Belzafesters themselves, much to Ami's chagrin.

Carran smirked in a self-aggrandizing way and stood to her full, and considerable, height. Her olive skinned hands interlinked into the symbol of the Aquilla and she bowed formally, "Greetings sister mine."

"Hello Carran," Ami did not bow in return, "It has been too long since I've seen you. How is your husband?"

"Dead I'm afraid," Carran sighed morosely, "Complications from an injury in the fires of on deck thirty. A pity, he was a good husband and an adequate lover. I will miss him."

Ami believed her, for Carran that was practically a poetic eulogy. She'd never heard Carran discuss a man as "adequate" or "good" without qualifying it with "potentially" or "eventually." But it was easier to be kind to the dead than the living. It really was a shame, Ami liked her sister's husband. He was a soft spoken and kind hearted man, even if he was ten years Carran's senior.

"I'm sorry for your loss Carran," Ami ineffectually floundered, "He was a nice man."

"We all lost too many because of the devil Faust," growled a one eyed crone seated to Carran's left before spitting on the ground to her left. The Circle sitters all scornfully muttered about the "devil" and spat.

"Indeed," Carran nodded soundly and spat to her left, though the gesture was painfully forced. Spitting on the ground was one of the many things Carran would normally have found to be beneath her. Ami bit her lip to stop from giggling.

"To business then," Doan slapped her hand down on the table, "What's the first order to deal with?"

"Another noble is demanding that we supplicate ourselves before Captain Sáclair and declare an oath to him. Seems to think that anyone who isn't a vassal of Sáclair is a danger to the ship," Ezra, a dour Belzafester missing a finger from his left hand, read from long scroll of memos, "The usual answer I suspect?"

The Circle sitters laughed politely and smacked their tankards against the table, beer sloshing wetly to the floor with every strike. Doan shook her head, "Sáclair has our friendship but it is the Inquisitor who we pledged our service to. Captain Sáclair will settle for our friendship or nothing."

Sergei's eyes flashed and he clenched his fists but said nothing. Ami might have missed it were she not focusing on her sister Aryana. The pretty blonde had attached herself to Sergei at the hip, looking determinedly at everything in the room other than the Lionheart. Aryana had a talent for foolish choices with men.

"A ship does not function when part of the crew decides it 'isn't taking orders' Doan. Are you sure you won't reconsider?" Ami sighed. She already knew the answer.

Doan's eyes rolled and she massaged her forehead with the palm of her hand, "Of course I'm sure of it Ami. I was sure of it two weeks ago, I was sure of it yesterday, and two weeks from now when you ask me again I will still be sure of it," she looked back at Ezra, "What's next on the agenda."

"Military business," hissed the serpentine voice of Gaer Tiber, head of the Belzafest PDF. Gaer's face was one massive scarred mass of burns and cuts from where one of the Half-breed monsters of Faust had spat acid into it, dissolving his lower jaw almost entirely. The lower half of his head was now dominated by a terrifying prosthetic. He pointed with a scarred hand to Sergei, "Specifically his proposal, though I'm hesitant to call it anything other than an ultimatum."

"Two Golan transports," Sergei held up his fingers, "Only two, out of the twelve you came here in. We'll pay you for them if need be but we really do need two of those troop transports."

"And by willing to pay you mean you will simply take them and offer what you believe to be fair you mean? I'm only in charge of PDF troopers but I'm not a complete idiot Sergei. I know you've already got Lionhearts standing in the landing bay waiting to claim them," His augmentic jaw clicked loudly and warped his speech, "No, I will not consent to his."

"Need I remind you that your people are housed in our ship out of the goodness of the Lionhearts and Sáclair? We are asking for a small sacrifice by comparison," Sergei leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, yawning in disinterest, "I really fail to see why this is an issue."

"A small sacrifice by comparison? _Small?_ You want to take away one more scrap of home from us and you call it small? How dare you," Gaer grabbed the front of Sergei's shirt and yanked him to his feet, "Faest called what he did to us a _small sacrifice_. I suppose it was a small sacrifice for me to lose my jaw."

"Enough!" Sergei grabbed Gaer's hand and spun the man around, pulling his arm painfully round and pinning the man to the table, "Get a hold of yourself man. You're a damn general."

"Going to break my arm to get what you want boy? Just one more small sacrifice I suppose," Gaer snarled bitterly. Sergei scowled and shoved Gaer away.

"You're not worth the effort you bitter old miser," Sergei examined the now stretched silk of his shirt in annoyance before sitting down next to Aryana, "You are an angry man without music in your heart."

"Bah, you're a damned fool," growled Gaer as he righted himself and sat back at the table. The Sitters seemed to take the brawl between the two men surprisingly well, barely batting an eyelash at the brawl.

Ami's sister Aryana, was not prone to such subtlety. The pretty blond was cooing over Sergei's shirt soon as Sergei sat down. She glared daggers at Gaer, though the effect was somewhat ruined by her inability to look at Gaer for more than a few seconds at a time. She tried to glare, squint, and look away from Gaer all a the same time and just twitched epilepticaly for a moment before just giving up and flirting with Sergei.

A young sitter of nearly thirty bowed her head politely, "Sergei, please appreciate that you may use the Golan transports if you need them, but we are hesitant to part with such an important part of our homeland. Our people are, quite reasonably, reluctant to do something that potentially robs us the ability to evacuate all our remaining people."

"I would appreciate it if you were to write up our ability to borrow the transports as a formal declaration, you can call it a rental if it makes it more palatable," It was Arda, the most soft spoken of Sáclair's daughters. Arda was cautious with her words to the point of being mute but her speech was never frivolous or incoherent. Ami liked Arda.

The circle muttered to each other in the language of Belzafest, a harsh gothic derivative, before Doan nodded twice, "You shall have it, and them but we want something in return."

"What?" Sergei rolled his eyes to the sky, "What more could you possibly want from us?"

"I want the damn Lionhearts and Security of this ship to re-estate the emergency security around our people," Gaer murmured furiously, "We want there to be security on every street corner and someone to be checking on us weekly, daily, hell maybe even hourly to look for heretics."

"The Inquisitor determined that there was no need for that, and Osma concurred. Neither of them could find any indications of heretical taint upon you nor were the Docere Medicus able to find abnormalities in your DNA," One of the security officers shook his head confusedly, "And you want to be treated like heretics?"

"Officer," Rual looked down to the nameplate on the man's vest, "Shakut is it? You are aware of the two murders in this sector of the ship over the past two weeks."

"Of course," Shakut nodded sadly, "Two girls killed about a week apart, though to be fair two murders in a sector isn't that statistically abnormal."

"It is for us officer," snarled Gaer, "We would no more harm each other than harm ourselves. And we're certainly not about to start ripping out each other's hearts."

"Ripping out what?" Sergei sat up in his chair, dismissing the affections of Aryana abruptly. He scrunched up his face awkwardly, "How old were these girls?"

Shakut's face blanched and he feverishly searched through his pack, "I swear I had no idea! The whole damn bureaucracy of the security services went to hell when Osma got himself blown up. I still haven't even seen the autopsy."

"You _will_ assign additional troops to guard the Belzafesters. I will not have a damn serial killer on this ship or saboteur trying to seed dissent," Sergei crossed his arms and pawed through the various maps and documents on the table. Small scrolls and random pages fell to the floor as he tossed things out of his way.

"The map is on the shelf Sergei," Gaer tapped the iron shelves behind him pointing to a wide sheaf of oilskin wrapped paper. He pulled it down and passed it to the Lionheart, showing twisted and cracked skin of his flesh nearly as dark as the oilskin.

A bitter looking young woman with a pinched face unrolled the map upon the table, pointing with a narrow finger tipped with an odd golden ring. It clicked on the table with every movement of her finger, punctuating every sentence as she spoke, "They were killed here and here. Not enough to determine a pattern but both girls were killed as they walked back from mass. Heretical ritual no doubt."

Arda snorted, "With respect Madame Senna, you have been sending your children to the local churches so often it would only be notable that they were murdered in events unrelated to worship. At this point you might as well just send all your children to a monastery."

"You mock our faith," Gaer cracked in his thunderous whisper, his eyes shouting as his voice could not. The medals on his dark suit flashed as he rounded on her, clinking against each other.

"I mock your reasoning. A line between two killings is not a pattern. It is a co-incidence. Assuming heretic ritual at this point is premature, one need not be a servant of the dark gods to be a proper bastard of a man, or a woman for that matter. There were no heretical symbols written at the sites of the murders to my knowledge nor were there any other signals that we should fear heresy," Arda walked over to the table and pointed at the map, "Both murders happened at heavy transit points in the sector, it seems more likely to me that these were murders of opportunity than heretical acts."

"Do you know of many murders of opportunity where they cut the hearts?" Rual shook her head unconvinced, "I pray you are right child but I doubt it. I know heresy when I see it. I can practically smell it." She sniffed the air to emphasize the point.

"Superstition is not proof," Arda said firmly staring the security personnel in the eyes, "The forces of Sáclair are bound by reason, logic, and proof are they not Shakut?"

Shakut straightened up and saluted her, "Yes madam of course madam," with absolute conviction. Ami noticed that the hand not saluting her was still clutching a small Aquilla rosary so hard his fingers were turning white.

"Bah," Gaer flicked his forefinger and thumb three times, the Belzafest gesture for warding off evil, "Be it on your head lass. As long as we have the added security I'm happy, but don't claim I did not warn you of the dangers."

"Mr. Gaer we have enough dangers to deal with xenos and saboteurs without inventing new ones," Ami sighed, "Deal with things as they are not how they could be or might be."

"Very well," Rual nodded and rested her hands on her generous hips, "What is next on the business."

"Next we have a..." Gaer stopped for a moment, freezing mid step. The room shook briefly and there was dark rumbling clang in the distance as though someone were dragging something large and heavy over the deck. Ami's ears popped as the air pressure rapidly dropped and rose again.

Gaer looked to Sergei and swore loudly, "Lionheart, keep these people safe! I need to see what's going on outside."

"Like hell you're leaving me," Sergei stood up quickly and pulled a pistol out of its holster, "The Lionhearts are protectors of the ship. If someone must stay you will."

"And I am in charge of protecting the welfare of the Belzafesters. I will not leave them unguarded." Gaer straightened his back to his full, and considerable, height.

"Both of you nattering hens just go already," Shat clapped his hands to get the room's attention, "My gun is as good as either of yours, I'll protect the circle. Now go!"

The two men didn't need to be told twice. They bolted out of the apartment and into the main passageway. Ami followed close behind, her legs burned with the struggle of keeping up with the professional soldiers.

It suddenly became hard to breathe.

Smoke billowed down the hallway from further aft, red warning klaxons flashing and shouting behind it. The two soldiers pulled military issue breathing apparatuses over their faces, not even breaking their stride. Ami reached into her bag and pulled out her rebreather, fixing it tightly to her face as she ran. It pinched at the skin of her face and fogged up as she exhaled but the air was cool and fresh inside.

The ran down the small side passageways and maintenance causeways of the _Endless Bounty_. First going right, then left, then down a bit, then to the left, onward and onward they traveled. Sergei had a preternatural understanding of the ships twists and turns, never once turning back or checking to see where he was. Ami followed as fast as she could, her heart thundering in her breast.

Sergei screamed, "Duck!" and fell to the floor. A cable swung down from the ceiling, whipping inches from Ami's face. It swung back around and caught Gaer on the right side, flipping him head over heels to the ground. The grizzled Belzafester swore loudly and stood up. His arm hung awkwardly at his side bleeding through his shirt, clearly dislocated.

"I'd be faster next time old man," Sergei stopped to examine the wound.

"I'd shut your damn mouth laddie," Gaer shoved the bone back into the socket, grunting with the effort and swearing like a sailor, "And keep your damn opinions to yourself.

"Are you going to be ok," Ami looked at the arm speculatively, "It's still bleeding a lot."

"He'll be fine Ami, it's just a scratch," Sergei said pensively as he looked at the arm. He froze as he realized with whom he was speaking, "Ami what in the devil are you doing here? With us? Why aren't you with the circle?"

"I wanted to help," Ami crossed her arms and glared, "I can make it an order if you'd prefer."

"Dammit Ami I am not about to take a teenage girl into a damn disaster area! Turn back and go to the Circle," Sergei looked to Gaer who was nodding in agreement, "This is no place for you."

"Well you're just going to have to tie me up and drag me back to the Circle then," Ami said petulantly, "Because you aren't getting me to leave otherwise. Even if I wanted to I don't know the way to get back safely."

Another distant rumble rocked the ship, "And I don't think there's enough time to argue anyway."

Gaer grunted, "If the fool girl wants to get herself killed let her."

Sergei swore and started running again, "Fine, follow! Do whatever you like. A thousand curses on strong willed women, I don't have time for this."

The three of them continued to run down the passages, following Sergei's lead, bobbing and weaving about the corridor. Belzafesters ran furiously from one place to the next, yelling orders or dragging the wounded to safety. In all the kerfuffle it was impossible for Ami to tell exactly what was going on.

"What are they yelling," Sergei yelled to Gaer, "What has happened?"

"A bomb," Gaer spat on the ground, "To the Eye and back a damn bomb."

Ami looked around and spotted a familiar red-robed form in the distance overseeing a trio of servitors furiously banging on a sealed bulkhead door with cutting tools, "Over there! He ought to know what is going on."

The three sprinted across he smoke filled promenade towards the bulkhead. Ami tripped on a broken bit of masonry, scraping her knee and tearing her dress. Her mother would be furious. Then again her mother might not even notice the dress at all due to her anger at Ami for running towards a recently exploded bombsite.

Gaer grabbed her by the elbow and yanked her to her feet, shoving her forwards, "Get up girl. On your damn feet, or do most men find you of more use on your knees."

Sergei grabbed Gaer by the wrist, "Gaer you are angry, you are in pain, and you are under attack. For these three reasons I will let you keep your hand. If you ever speak to the young lady Sáclair in that manner again it will be the last words you are allowed to speak. She is an impertinent sixteen-year-old girl not a soldier in your armies. You will treat her with dignity. Do we have an understanding?"

Gaer merely glared and said nothing.

"Good," Sergei let Gaer's hand go and walked towards the priest, "Let's see what is going on."

The priest was yelling angrily in high gothic at the servitors, waving heavy robotic arms of his harness around furiously and smacking a staff on the ground, "Move damn you lot! Move! We have to get that bloody door open!"

"Enginseer," Gaer snarled, "What in the pit of the Eye is going on?"

"Saboteurs," the priest eyed the three of them cautiously, "Damned saboteurs launched an attack on the environmental systems. Let loose bombs in the machine minds that control the generators for the environmental systems."

"Were they successful?" Sergei said apprehensively looking to the door. It had started to give way to the servitors. Small pools of molten metal formed at the bases of the door, scalding the unfeeling flesh of the servitors.

"Does it damn well look like they failed?" Gaer motioned to a greasy puddle of what looked disturbingly like human remains. Ami doubled up and ripped the mask off her face, a foul taste filling her mouth. She leaned over the side of the causeway and lost the contents of her stomach

"Have you had your fill yet girl," Gaer whispered grimly as he bend over to search through the puddle of remains for a small silver tag. He picked it up and showed it to her, blocky Belzafest letters indicating the former man's name, "Nair, he was no more than twenty. Tell me daughter of Sáclair. Are you glad to have come? Is it enough of an adventure for you?"

Sergei shot him a look of warning and reached over to comfort Ami. She waved him away and leaned over the edge as a second wave of nausea hit her. Throne above how was there that much blood in a man's body.

"Actually it seems that they did fail," the Enginseer pursed his lips and leaned back on one of the trailing arms of his servo-harness, "It seems that your man, Nair was it? Well Nair managed to close the blast doors to a secondary control center. If we get the doors open we ought to be able to regulate the systems before the sectors on lockdown go pear shaped. Only the damn things are locked down under some bizarre encryption beyond my security clearance and Iino went and died before bothering to pass the damn codes on to the rest of us."

Ami wiped the sick from her lips with the sleeve of her dress and did her best not to look too smug, finally a chance for her to shine. She reached into the satchel at her side and pulled out a golden rod slightly longer than her hand tipped with a blue iridescent pearl. She pointed it at the door and grinned widely at Gaer, "Allow me to take care of this."

She pressed down on a button on the rod, shooting a beam of light across the room towards the smiling gargoyle above the door. It's jaw slammed shut with a clattering snap and the blast doors swung inwards, spattering molten metal along the floor in sizzling puddles. Ami gave Gaer the most innocent look she could manage and tittered vapid giggles worthy of her airhead sister Aryana, "I suppose it was worth it to bring me along then."

Gaer's lip curled and he stormed through the open doors, snarling incoherently in the Belzafest language. Sergei shook his head in amusement leaned in towards Ami, tapping the tip of his nose, "Child I am the first to admit that that insufferable man has no music in his heart but he is not to be trifled with. Even if he _is_ an annoying, stodgy, old, miserable bastard."

"Nor am I," Ami imitated the glare her father used to cow unruly captains. The effect was apparently less effective on a sixteen-year-old girl's face still covered with soot. Sergei rolled his eyes and wandered after the Gaer and the Tech-priest.

The control room was a mess of sparking cables and incomprehensible machines that sputtered and sparked loudly, growling and groaning as they completed their unknown function. The priest wandered to the center of the room and proceeded to plug the various hanging cables and cords into the interface plate on his chest. Ami felt pangs of jealousy for her half-brother, soon he would be able to do the same.

The priest's tapped at the air and a holographic display appeared, glyphs and numbers floating in the air. Bizarre and pulchritudinous icons vacillated and fluctuated with every twitch of his silvery metal fingers. He swore and gritted his teeth, "They destroyed the axillary generator we were using as a shunt between engines and the shields. Bastards!"

"Are either damaged?" Sergei squinted at the symbols uncomprehendingly.

"They will be soon," the priest clicked his tongue on his teeth frustratedly, "I'm shutting down primary aft reactor feeds to the engines." Ami blinked in surprise, she couldn't imagine the set of conditions requiring a cold shut down of the engines.

"Not without an order from the Captain you're not!" Sergei glared furiously and reflexively patted his side arm, "Don't move a muscle."

The priest continued typing on the keyboard, "I'm going to have to cut power to the engines or we're going to get the plasma reactors stuck in a feedback loop. At best we'd lose half the ship's population when the environmental controls go pear shaped. Trust me Lionheart."

"Damn it Enginseer I am ordering you to stop," Sergei pulled out his side arm and pointed it at the priest, pressing it against the man's temple, "Stop it now!"

"I haven't got time for this," the priest growled, "By the throne I do not."

Ami blinked in surprise, "Say that again?"

"Throne be damned I haven't got time for this," The priest snarled and snapped his fingers, the servitors flexed the muscles in their arms and their cutting torches flickered back to life. He made the symbol of the Aquilla went back to typing, "Away with you boy."

"Sergei shoot him! Shoot him now!" Ami shot a terrified look at the servitors, "He's a saboteur!"

"What!" Sergei flinched and backed out of arm's reach of the priest, "How do you know?"

"Have you ever heard a ship's servant of the Omnissiah call out an oath in the Emperor's name? How many of them pray to the Emperor? Make the symbol of the Aquilla? For that matter where is his seal of office? He's Amon!" Ami pulled a laspistol from her dress.

Gaer didn't need to be told twice, he fired three times into the spot between the priest's eyes. The beams connected with a flickering field of energy in front of the priest's face. The priest glared and screeched a warbling mix of binary and gothic, his voice reverberating distortedly, "Kill them!"

The servitors leapt into action, the close quarters of the control room more than making up for their clumsiness. One of the Brobdingnagian cyborgs groaned morosely and lunged for Ami, it's fiery blade sputtering and spitting deadly energy. Ami tucked her body and rolled out of the way of a servitor's flaming torch, wincing as the jagged deck plate shredded through the silk of her dress and the soft flesh of her arm.

A beam of green light shot across the room, impacting with the back of the servitor's neck and boiling through flesh and bone. It collapsed in a paralyzed heap. Its cutting torch burned through it's stomach and spilled it's entrails on the deck, tripping a second servitor and giving Ami a chance to shoot it in the eyes.

The pitiful creature furiously brandished it's cutting tool, still trying to comprehend that it could no longer see out of the sightless pits where eyes had been. Gaer grabbed it and heaved it forwards towards the third servitor, impaling it on the cutting tool of the third.

The third servitor shoved the corpse off it's blade and rushed forward, blade held high. It stopped mid stride and fell to it's knees as Sergei slid across the deck, slicing the creatures tendons and crippling it. It stabbed furiously at Sergei, slicing through his carapace armor and setting his silks aflame.

Gaer kicked the creature in the center of the chest, knocking it to the floor, before firing three times into the creature's adam's apple, "Stay down damn you."

"You're too late to stop me! You will die in droves you insufferable puppets of an unworthy traitor to the Amon," the fake priest cackled and tore off the augmentic mask he'd been using to cover the top half of his face. His face was pox marked and his milky eyes were wide from narca inhalation. He slapped a glowing glyph with decided satisfaction a powerful void barrier snapped into place between the fake priest and his three attackers, "You can't win. Surrender and the Amon will take it into consideration when they put you on trial."

"Kiss the broad side of my ass," Gaer snarled. Ami couldn't help but agree with the sentiment.

"Come now," the fake priest smiled magnanimously, "You cannot hope to stop me."

Sergei shook his head and pulled a bulbous metal ball the size of an apple out of the webbing along his belt, "I beg to differ."

"You can't," the fake priest recoiled in horror, "You'll blow a plasma relay! You'll kill us all."

"You were going to do that anyway Amon filth," Sergei nodded to Ami, "You still have the controls for the door?"

"Yes," Ami pulled out the handle. It was cool and slippery in her sweaty palms.

"On a count of three I want you to press the button and start running," He looked Gaer in the eyes, "Do you understand."

"Yes... yes I do," Ami fumbled, "I think I..."

"Don't think, just run. One, two, three, now!" Sergei tossed the melta-bomb and shoved her forward. She pressed the button and sprinted forward toward the exit. Throne above, had the doors opened half as fast as they were closing? It didn't seem possible.

The deck rocked again, rumbling from a distant explosion. Ami stepped heavily and cried in pain foot caught on a sharp shard of rebar. She stumbled and fell to the floor, grasping at her foot.

"Come on then girl," Gaer snarled grabbing her by the arm and yanking her through the door. He dove out the door and into the main corridor. He pushed her down the corridor towards Sergei and leapt into an alcove behind a particularly ugly gargoyle, "Take cover!"

Sergei grabbed Ami and heaved the both of them to the floor, rolling to the side and away from the arched door to the control room. An iridescent green wall of fire shot out from the arch, super-heated plasma burning through stone and metal with impunity. Ami's heart thundered with fear as she pressed herself up to the broad chest of Sergei, clutching on for protection.

Ami found herself envying Aryana's prior closeness to the wildly grinning Lionheart as Sergei smiled roguishly, flashing a mouth full of perfectly white teeth, "I think I got him."

* * *

"Explain this to me again," John massaged his temples starting at Garibaldi in frustration. The two of them intently stared at station schematics, trying to ignore the infuriatingly insulting voice that continued to drone on over the intercom as it droned on incessantly.

"It looks like the Magos activated a part of Babylon 5's programming that we'd mostly forgotten about. Apparently the Imperials consider hacking each other's computers to be socially acceptable. She actually had the unmitigated gall to be offended when I bundled her up and booted her off the station," Garibaldi smiled to himself, indecently pleased with having been able to do that, "I am not sorry to see the back of Little miss Mengele."

"It's good to see that you are finally treating the Imperials with the suspicion they deserve," Mr. Bester flexed his fingers within his gloves, stretching the material loudly. John would have preferred to exclude the Psi Corps officer, however it seemed less dangerous to keep him in plain view than to give him the run of the ship. One of Garibaldi's little birds had advised them that Mr. Bester had already been conducting inquiries about Imperial products with some of the less reputable station citizens.

There was, however, some wisdom in treating the Imperials with caution.

John had to admit that puncturing a hole in the massive egos of the Imperial agents was not without merit. He was not, however, about to let Mr. Bester know that if he could avoid it. Mr. Bester already had some grandiose ideas of his own authority and it wouldn't do to affirm any of them, "You realize kicking her off the station will be diplomatically difficult, especially in light of the already tense situation."

"Yeah," chuckled a surly voice over the intercom, "But it was funny as hell! I hope the bitch comes back so that he can do it again."

John sighed, "So how in the heck did this AI get on my station in the first place?"

"Sparky. The AI's name is apparently 'sparky the computer' according to the station records."

"Of course it is," Mr. Bester rolled his eyes and glared at the intercom. The psychic seemed to take the presence of anyone who's mind he could not read as a personal offense, "Nobody had ever accused the military of being overly creative in naming things. I suppose we're lucky it's not a sexually provocative acronym."

"Well when they made the station they initially installed the computers into the station they were all run by an experimental AI with a 'personality'," Garibaldi glared at the intercom on the consul, "If by personality you mean that the freaking thing was stubborn, uncooperative, and moody."

"Moody," barked the AI, "Listen buddy why don't we walk outside and settle who's the moody one once an for all?"

"Shove it Sparky," Unamused at the computers increasingly unrealistic threats of physical violence against him, Garibaldi ripped the intercom out of the control panel. It flew across the room and collided with the wall, shards of plastic scattering across the floor of the CnC, "I hate that damn thing."

"Naughty, naughty Mr. Garibaldi," tutted Mr. Bester, "It won't do to show your temper like that. Control my good sir, control is all."

Garibaldi glared at the psychic, "Want to find out how far I can fling you across the room before I stop having to hear you speak either."

"Such hostility," Mr. Bester beamed with excitement, "What on earth have I done to deserve it."

"I don't have time for this," John pointed to the schematics of the station, "Shouldn't we be able to just disable it from the main root menu?" Garibaldi turned back to the schematics and pretended that there was not a short man standing on tiptoe behind him to see the screen.

"Normally we would be able to disable it, it would be a nightmare to do and we'd have to shut off the station's computer systems but it can be done. But whatever Frist did to activate Sparky involved rewriting the command codes for activating and deactivating him. Short of re-writing the entire OS from the ground up I don't know if we'll be able to get rid of him," Garibaldi shook his head amusedly, "I'll give the Imperials one thing, they keep my life interesting."

Garibaldi's lip curled, "I hate interesting. I like nice and boring."

"Disable it as fast as you can," John sighed, "We're already getting complaints about him from the Ambassadors. Sparky closed and encrypted the lock on Londo's rooms after the Ambassador mouthed off him. For the moment he's only annoyed but once he runs out of booze it could cause a diplomatic incident."

"I'm on it sir," A bright flash of fire in the distance flared blindingly. Garibaldi looked out the window and swore angrily, "Oh what now? There's always one more thing isn't there."

Lt. Corwin ran over to the commander, "Sir, it's the _Endless Bounty_. They've suffered some sort of explosion. The radio chatter between their patrol and freight ships seems to indicate that it's sabotage. Something called the _Amon Sui_."

"They're discussing this on unencrypted channels?" John activated the camera of the nearest repair-bot'. The massive crimson and red ship sat dead in space, a cloud of plasma-charged smoke billowing lazily from numerous vents the ships hull. Flames flickered unnaturally across the hull, melting the elaborate gilded figures painted along its sides.

"I don't think we're much of a priority to them right now sir," Lt. Corwin shook his head, "They're yelling something about shutting down the," he squinted at the readout, "skin of the hellish voids," he looked back at John, "I think it's talking about the shields sir. They've taken out the shields."

"Are they asking for aid?"

"Not yet sir," Lt. Corwin shrugged, "It's probably only a temporary setback. There doesn't seem to have been any permanent damage I can see."

"More than sufficient for us to accomplish what we need to," The psychic pulled an stack of official papers stamped with the presidential seal from earth-dome from his bag and handed them to John, "I am officially declaring that ship is guilty of aiding and abetting unregistered telepathic malfeasance."

"Mr. Bester you do not have the authority to commandeer this station," John glared furiously, "This is a diplomatic space and I will not have you trying to seize a diplomatic ship with my station."

"Captain do you think I'm a fool? I know that very well," Bester smiled and pulled a metallic cylinder the size of a cigar from his pocket and pressed down on the button on the top of it, "Luckily you aren't the only military asset in this sector of space at my disposal. The president sent ships to wait in hyperspace weeks ago, just in case things went south."

* * *

"What in the hell is going on Mr. Enzo?" Sáclair leapt up from where he'd been slumbering on his throne in a flurry of fur lined silks and feather festooned cloaks, brandishing an antique rapier. The weapon glowed and sparked as he waved it, flinging white hot embers towards the faces of the dozen officers and servitors standing around the throne, "Who is attacking us this time?"

"I don't know sir," Donat wiped the sweat from his brow and redirected power from ancillary generator seven to primary reactor three to keep the fuel in the tertiary drives from going into meltdown, "Reports are still spotty at the moment." He blinked in momentary surprise and looked at the captain, his blank face titled in confusion, "Aren't you scheduled to be meeting with the Inquisitor on the Babylon station at the moment?"

"Now is hardly the time to argue over a scheduling conflict Mr. Enzo," He was right of course, there was a scheduled meeting. However the connection with the astropathic servitor was malfunctioning. When he'd tried to use it for his scheduled meeting he'd simply woken up in a blinding cold darkness as still as death, unable to speak, unable to scream.

Something was deeply, deeply wrong with the astropathic servitor. They'd have to investigate it later.

After sitting through that piercing nothingness just the once, he was not eager to try again soon. Sáclair had nearly cried in relief when the automated warning systems woke him from his astropathic coma and called him to action.

"Sir," Mr. Enzo broke Sáclair out of his revelry, "Are you going to put the sword down sir?"

Sáclair blustered embarrassedly and sheathed the weapon. He grimaced ungraciously, "I may do as I please Mr. Enzo. Now give me an update." Sáclair relaxed into his throne, leaning back into the cushions and waving to one of his vassals for wine.

"Link up with the ship and see for yourself sir," Donat smacked one of the consuls and screamed over the vox link the many crewmen operating control systems, "I need to get a two point increase on the aux nav recovery systems or we're going to lose the damned fire suppression controls."

Sáclair latched the silvery filaments from the throne into his arm but rather than being greeted by the ecstatic waves of sensation he normally associated with his beautiful wondrous ship he doubled up in pain, gritting his teeth and swearing loudly. His fingers popped and creaked as he gripped the armrests of the throne forcefully, "Throne cursed child of the warp! They damaged two of the reactors and we lost the tertiary plasma feeds."

Sácomer's elephantine jowls quivered into view on a flickering hololith display. His fair hair was ruffled and his frock, normally spotless, was stained with something purple and covered in the crumbs of his interrupted meal, "Early reports are indicating that Amon Sui saboteurs detonated explosives in a number of populated areas to re-direct the ships engineers and Enginseers then sent their own fake enginseers to critical locations to try and enter and sabotage the systems therein."

"How many of them succeeded?" Donat pulled up a cross section of the ship. Sections flickered intermittently from red to green, to black again as the ship's machine spirit struggled to analyze the damages done to it. The ship was screaming in fear and pain, though only Sáclair could hear it.

"Attacks on three primary generators and a medical unit succeeded," Sácomer flinched as the cables attached to the front of his head sparked and squelched, burning small patches of his face and smoldering against the silk of his shirt, "Damn it!," he swatted at the smoldering embers, "They also managed to fry a lot of the control relays. It's all the enginseers can do to keep the ship from blowing itself up."

"A medical unit," Donat's vocalized terror expressing what his dead face could not. The man's hands trembled as he tried to refine the data feeds to the still shifting damage readouts on his screen, "Which medical unit?"

Sáclair glared furiously at his second in command, "Mr. Enzo you can check on the welfare of your daughter once we've managed to not lose the entire ship. Now is not the time for sentimentality."

"Sir but if she's been hurt," Donat's voice throbbed with pain and loss, "If she's been..." Donat stumbled, unable to articulate the word dead.

"Then you'll help her by co-ordinating the recovery effort and the emergency response teams. You aren't going to do anything but get in their way," Sáclair slammed his fist on the arm of his throne, "By the Emperor man get ahold of yourself."

"She's my Daughter sir," Donat's eyes pleaded piteously. He worriedly rubbed hands aged with decades of service and submission, "My only daughter."

"And this is your duty," Donat pointed to the hololithic image of the ship. He waved to the crewmen scuttling about the great hall with reports and duties, "These are your family. If you are willing to sacrifice half a million souls to the void for your stubbornness you will deserve the judgement handed to you in the hereafter. Of that I assure you."

"How dare you!" Donat recoiled scandalized by Sáclair's accusation, "Have you no dignity?"

The ship rumbled distantly and Sáclair felt the ship lose control of the tertiary field buffers on the gravity relays. He winced with pain and glared Donat in the eyes. "Donat, you are like a brother to me. I've trusted you above all others for years but if you lack the ability to completely fulfill your duties I will find someone who can. Now I need you to go to the aft section and take command of the repairs in person, we've lost vox communications with the aft and I need someone I can trust in there," he stared pointedly into Donat's eyes, "I can trust you Mr. Enzo can't I?"

Donat cleared his throat dispassionately, "Yes sir. Of course sir." His second in command stepped upon one of the floating marble slabs and descended to the floor. Sáclair didn't bother to watch his decent as he started to issue orders in rapid succession, not waiting for replies or confirmations of comprehension.

"...Sácomer I need to get the navigation sensors online, jerry rig it if you have to but get them running."

"...Illrich I need the astropaths sending a message to all ships to stay out of the hangar. The last thing we need is some damn fool to try to land his ship and light a cracked promethium feed."

"... and can someone get me some more damn wine."

"... no we need someone in the armory to make sure that none of the warheads were cracked. Have someone do it by hand if need be. Make that the first priority."

"... all! Do it all! Do it now! We don't have time to be pussyfooting around this. Get moving get up and go."

Sáclair swore furiously as the proximity alarms from the sensors flared and a handful of ships bearing Alliance markings appeared to the port side of his ship, bursting out of hyperspace. The boxy ships edged closer to the _Endless Bounty_, angry dogs swarming around a bear. Well if they wanted to attack this bear they'd soon discover that even an injured bear still had claws.

"Illrich," Sáclair thumbed an activation switch on his throne, "Is this translation servitor working?"

"She'll do what she was made for," The ancient navigator reached down and patted the head of the prostrate servitor, his own pale flesh seeming whiter still by comparison to the rich chocolate shade of the servitor's flesh. Her waxy skin shone under the flickering light of the chandeliers, bared flesh decorated with an elaborate interlacing of circuitry and cables. She hung limply from the ceiling, coquettish and coy, waving like some perverse marionette, "She's some of Iino's last, and best, work. Before he died Iino designed her to interpret the entirety of the Alliance language and translate it with the most accurate words possible."

"Good," Sáclair growled, "Open a channel to those damn ships. I don't like having military ships swarming about me at the first taste of blood in the water. Voice only, we don't need them seeing any of the damage done by the Amon."

"They're responding to our hail sir," Sácomer nodded firmly, "Sir shields are still offline, we're going to have to rely on hull armor alone."

"It will have to do," Sáclair would find each and every Amon Sui bastard on his ship and flense them. Hilder had been so kind as to educate Sáclair in the ways in which to torture a man without leaving a mark, the Inquisitor was such a neat monster. Sáclair doubted he'd have the patience for it, "Open the channel Sácomer, and warn any freighters and transports not on the ship that they should head for the far side of the planet. This could become messy."

The carmel skinned servitor gasped in shock and twisted in the cables from which she hung. Her milky eyes opened wide and she began to speak in a hard voice wholly incongruous with her physical form, "This is Major Pierce of the Earth Alliance Carrier _Normandy_. You have violated Earth Alliance law by brining unregulated and unregistered telepaths into Earth Alliance territory. You will stand down and prepare to be boarded."

"No, I will not," Sáclair laughed amusedly, "I have no intention of allowing a sovereign ship in service of the God Emperor's most noble Inquisition to surrender to some backwater colony with disillusions of grandeur. "

"You are human beings traveling in human space. The Earth Alliance has the legal authority to seize any civilian owned warships illegally operated within its borders," the servitor sighed and rolled its eyes, presumably in imitation of Major Pierce, "We have you outnumbered and outgunned. Surrender now."

"You bark well Alliance dog, let's see how well you bite," Sáclair cut the transmission. The servitor went limp, hanging lazily from the ceiling.

"We're receiving a second transmission sir," Sácomer interjected, "It's from the Babylon station."

"Ignore it," Sáclair hoped he was out of weapons range of the station. It was, in retrospect, good fortune that the Alliance Captain had insisted so forcefully that they relocate the bounty to the edge of the asteroid belt. It might well be their salvation now, "Weapons to full, deploy all squadrons. If they want a fight by the Emperor I'll give them a fight they won't soon forget."

* * *

"Neither side is responding to my hails sir," Lt. Corwin feverishly worked the controls to the military communications system, trying in vane to gain connect with the Alliance ships. Bester had been wise to order the Alliance ships to radio silence.

"Arrest him," Captain Sheridan snarled, "Now!"

Bester swallowed uncomfortably as the echoing whirrs of three dozen PPGs sounded round him on all sides. One did not have to be a mind reader to realize how close Captain Sheridan was to ordering him to be shot on the spot, but it helped. The man was radiating a furious calm, sharp as a razor's edge.

"What charges are you arresting me on Captain," Bester's wrists stung as Mr. Garibaldi forced them into a set of restraints, making to effort to avoid twisting Bester's arms in the process, "Or are you simply planning on making them up at a later date?"

"What charges?" Captain Sheridan repeated the words in utter incredulity, "_What_ charges? What _charges_? We can start with treason and start working our way down from there! My authority in diplomatic matters relating to this station I is _not _in to be questioned," he pointed at the pricks of light from multi-megaton blasts burst in the distance where the Earth Alliance warships and the _Endless Bounty_ were skirmishing just outside the range of Babylon's effective firing range, "And you have the unmitigated gall to order a military action under my nose in direct contradiction to my orders."

"I have total authority in matters pertaining to human psychics," Bester glared back at the Captain, "And I think you'll find that while your authority ends outside this station mine extends to the entirety of the Earth Alliance space."

"Looking human is not enough proof to launch an attack!" The captain's eyes bulged in their sockets. He ran his hands through his hair in consternation, "For that matter it was only this morning that _you_ were the one warning _me_ to be cautious with the Imperials."

"This morning I didn't have proof," Bester smiled and reached to the satchel at his side stopping abruptly Mr. Garibaldi grabbed his hand roughly by the thumb and twisted it, "I'm only reaching for a document Captain. It is in the yellow envelope in my bag. Please help yourself."

Garibaldi tore the envelope of his bag, pulling a medical report from the inside. The balding man's eyes roved the page, his teeth clenching tighter and tighter as he read along. He twisted the thumb, "Where did you get this report!"

"I have my way's Mr. Garibaldi," his thumb was fit to burst, "I am under no obligation to provide all my sources."

"This is a medical report I ordered on blood that was covering the Imperial we have in storage. How did you get a secure station report?" He twisted the arm farther and Bester cried out in pain. Good god the man actually intended to break his arm.

"Mr. Garibaldi, that's enough," John's face fell, "Mr. Bester am I to understand that your only evidence is this? The evidence you have to prove that the Imperials are human is that there was human blood on the man we have in confinement?"

"It's more than enough. Mr. Garibaldi's report indicated that the Imperial did not injure any humans in the process to have bled on him," Bester smiled in victory, "More than enough for the standards of reasonable suspicion."

Garibaldi snarled, "No humans were injured by _him_ there were hundreds of people involved in that brawl. That blood could have come from anyone, including the security officer who restrained the damn Imperial in the first place."

"That blood perhaps, but not the sample you used to enter the Imperial's blood type into his police record to make sure we can give him proper medical treatment," he enjoyed the gobsmacked look on Garibaldi's face, "Surely you remembered that part of processing? Or have you been too busy?"

The Captain glared at Bester in fury before double tapping the back of his link, "Get Ambassador Hilder, _now_."

* * *

The shields closed around the viewport, protecting the bridge from debris. The bridge lit up bright red as the ship went into full battle mode. Major Pierce was going to have words with whatever moron decided that eight ships would be enough for this, even if two of them were carriers. The _Endless Bounty_ managed to cripple the Hyperion class ship _Algeria_ with its first salvo of laser fire, tearing through it's armor and destroying it's main reactor before shooting forwards.

Their point defense lasers were working overtime to stop the constant flow of small scale missile and projectile weapons. Imperial ship designers, while lacking in subtlety, had a fondness for gun batteries that was second to none. The ship dodged and weaved around asteroids, firing opportunistically at any target that presented itself with a speed wholly incongruous with its massive size.

"I want a full missile salvo from tubes six, ten, and twenty two. Aim for the existing hull breaches," This had to go down with an absolute minimum of casualties on both sides. The whole universe would be watching. President Clark was counting on him, "And see about hailing them again, we have to give these people every opportunity to end this without violence."

"I don't think they plan to indulge that wish sir," Commander Hector, Major Pierce's second in command, glared out the window, "In fact I'd wager they're planning on bloodying the waters as much as they can before they go down."

"Well then we'd best make sure most of the blood is theirs then won't we Commander?" Pierce smiled.

A massive explosion rocked the _Normandy_ as one of the high yield torpedoes fired by the _Endless Bounty_ got past their defense grid and collided with the side of the ship. Major Pierce jerked upwards in his harness as the artificial gravity ceased to function. He gagged slightly as his stomach accustomed itself to the floating sensation.

"That was a glancing hit sir," his weapons officer looked up, "From a nuke. We're getting major radiological alarms off of every explosion caused by that ship, small yield but still packing a hell of a punch. These guys are not playing around."

"Then we'd better not get hit then Lieutenant, and order all ships to prime their own nuclear armaments, two can play a this game." Clark couldn't blame him for responding with nuclear force in kind. He had every right to protect his ship and his fleet.

"Fighter wings are engaging Imperial ships," called out another officer as he listened to the pilot chatter, "Sir its sounding like they're having decent success. The Imperial ships are fixed wing fighters, not as maneuverable as our star-furies."

"The _Beijing Beauty_ just lost an engine sir. Mobility down to eighty percent."

"Sir the Babylon station is still hailing us," His communications officer looked up, "They're claiming that we're conducting an illegal military action and that they've arrested the person who issued the illegal orders."

"You verified the command codes on those orders I assume?" His communications officer was prone to obsessive compulsion. It was a useful trait in the man responsible for receiving their orders.

"Yes sir I did." The comms officer nodded, "Three times sir. They're still ordering us to stand down."

"Then it's legal. Sheridan is just going to have accept that this is out of his hands," the _Endless Bounty _swung around another asteroid and fired a salvo of missiles at the Belshazzar. The Alliance ship rapidly decompressed an empty cargo bay, flinging hard to starboard and out of harms way, "Get a firing solution and take the damn thing out. I want boarding teams ready to go. _Yesterday_. "

"Sir the _Venice_ was just disabled," the weapons officer swore, "By the Babylon station. The Babylon Five is firing on us."

"_What?_ " Major Pierce screeched, "Is he out of his mind?"

The comms officer interjected, "The station is repeating that the orders to attack the _Endless Bounty_ are illegal and they are legally bound to defend any and all ships under their protection."

"Get all ships out of range of the station's guns. I'm not going to fight one of our own ships if I can help it."

"What in the hell is Sheridan thinking? He'll get a court-marshal for this for sure," Major Pierce shook his head in confusion, "Get all fleet ships and fighters out of the gun range of Babylon 5. The last thing we need is for Sheridan to turn this into a blood bath."

* * *

"Get the damn guns under control!" John screamed to the weapons officer, "Disable the ships computers if you have to but get that AI to stop shooting!"

"It's programmed to follow the letter of the law of the Babylon charter sir. We're obligated to render assistance to all ships of non-hostile origin who ask for it. The _Endless Bounty_ was granted that protection... so it seems that Sparky took it upon himself to intervene." Lt. Corwin typed override commands into the computer at a feverish pace, "Sir it is just not responding to anything I type sir."

Mr. Garibaldi pulled up the command log on his data pad, "It's the damn coding the Magos put in. She replaced the section of coding we use for inputting command overrides."

John grimaced. Could this entire situation possibly get worse? "Mr. Garibaldi I need you to take a squad of engineers down to the main computer terminal and forcibly disconnect the main computer terminal from weapons control."

"That means we're going to have to aim the systems manually till we can get another computer core in sir," Lt. Corwin looked up nervously, "We might lose weapons systems altogether."

"I will not have this station deciding to fire on whoever it damn well pleases," John smacked his fist in the palm of his hand, grinding the knuckles furiously, "Mr. Garibaldi go now!"

"Good to see that you have everything well in hand Captain," jibed the forcibly restrained Psi Corps officer chained to the wall, "I can see why I should have left this delicate matter to you."

John glared at Mr. Bester, wanting very much to punch the man right in the center of his arrogant and self-righteous face. A pity really that the proper treatment of prisoners, especially the treatment of officers of the Psi Corps, were so well defined. Otherwise he might have been tempted to take up Garibaldi's offer to take him ought behind the shed and teach him some manners.

"I'm on it Captain," Garibaldi saluted flippantly and sprinted out the door out the door, shouting on his link as he went, "I need a full engineering team to cut me into the computer core, _yesterday."_

"Now Captain," Mr. Bester growled, "I think it's time that you and I had a little chat about what side you're fighting for. You seem to have lost track."

"Mr. Bester you have conducted an illegal military attack on a ship under my protection. I know what side I'm on very well. I'm on the side that's going to arrest you and see you go to prison," John waked up to Mr. Bester and reached up to the psychic's uniform, grabbing the man's badge and tearing it off, "I will not be intimidated by you Mr. Bester."

"Are you familiar with the articles of ethical psychic limitations Captain? It's really a fascinating read. It's the core of all legal regulation of psychic abilities. It defines our rights, our freedoms, and the situations in which we may use our abilities," he glared John in the eyes and his voice changed. It became a soporific and overpowering sound, reverberating tantalizingly in the back of John's head, "Including our ability to use it to fight treasonous rebellion."

The security officers on either side of Mr. Bester reached for their side arms but stopped inches from picking them up, their fingers limply grasping at the metal of the handle. Their eyes bulged with the exertion of trying to force their hands to function. Bester chuckled and spat out an order, "Captain you have already lost this conflict. The _Endless Bounty _will be taken into custody. Now s_tand down and let me do my job.__**Now.**__"_

John struggled to resist the overpowering urge to undo the binding on Mr. Bester's wrist restraints. His feet shuffled forwards of their own accord, first the left, then the right, edging closer and closer to the psychic. Mr. Bester smiled contemptuously, glaring John in the eyes hypnotically. Colors swirled enchantingly in the back of the man's eyes, making it impossible to stare away.

But he had to stare away. God he had to stare away.

The psychic whispered greedily as John got closer and closer, "_Let me go Captain. Let me go now!"_

"No..." John muttered feebly, "...No I won't"

"_Yes,"_ Mr. Bester smiled, "_You will."_

John watched from afar, in a dark corner of his mind, only vaguely recognizing the fact that his hands were working over the latches and buttons of the restraints. He angrily raged within his own head, whispering a furious tattoo of "no I won't," but only managed a token effort in resisting the psychic.

Mr. Bester smiled as he walked into the center of the room, grabbing John's side arm as he passed. The half dozen officers stood frozen, eyes flitting backwards and forwards. Bester twirled the PPG on his finger with glee, staring at the tactical readout with fascination, "It seems the _Endless Bounty _ has done well for herself," he looked up at John, "I hope you didn't have any friends on the _Agincourt _it seems that she hasn't faired well. Not dead yet but not good."

"Better, I am suspecting, than you will be doing soon," chuckled the amused voice of Ambassador Daul. The greying imperial man strode into the CnC with Skitarii Thross wearing a look of purest fury, "I am to be understanding that you authorize a military attack of my vessel."

Mr. Bester pointed the PPG squarely between Ambassador Daul's eyes, "Daul Hilder I am placing you under arrest for being an illegal telepath, making use of telepathic malfeasance, and the use of unsanctioned telepathic technologies. You _will_ comply."

The Ambassador looked John in the eyes, his calm and melodious voice echoing clearly in the back of his mind, "_Is this unsanctioned one enslaving your mind?"_

"Yes," John yelled though his lips would not move, "_Please help!"_

Blue balefire erupted from the ornate interlacing crown of cables around the Ambassador's head, "Cairn, try to leave him alive. I'll want to interrogate him later."

The Cyborg leapt towards Mr. Bester, cybernetic cables flailing. Bester fired at the Skitarii warrior, his eyes widening in terror as the PPG fire simply dissipated over a thin bubble of energy wrapped around the cyborg's head and chest. Apparently the shielding technology of the empire was not limited to large scale applications. Bester dodged to the left, flinging himself over a control panel and into the recessed pit in the center of the room. Cairn's cables smashed into where Bester had been with a bone shattering crunch, tearing the computer consul into a shredded mess of metal and wires.

A shower of sparks spat from the ruined consul into the pit. Bester cried out in pain and glared angrily at Thross. The Psi Cop screeched an overpowering voice of psychic command, _"Stop at once."_

The Skitarii faltered, stopping long enough for Mr. Bester to flee a second limb crushing blow. Ambassador Daul shouted, "Oh no you don't!" clapped his hands together and started chanting in bizarre and arcane languages. Glowing runes hovered in the air around him pulsing with unspoken power. Glowing balefire that engulfed his head spun round the room dizzyingly, bathing everything in a chilling green cold that bit into the heart.

John shuddered with the cold and realized with joy that he could move his limbs under his own power. Whatever the Ambassador was doing was working. God bless him it was working. John screamed, "What are you waiting for? Help the Ambassador's man!"

The officers rushed in to help as Bester fired into the cyborg's chest a third time, the shields flickering and dying with the effort of standing up to sustained fire. A valiant effort, but too late. The Cyborg's mechanical tentacles caught Bester at the knee, wrapping around the leg and twisting like a python. Bester fell to the ground in agony, his left leg crushed into a twisted mess.

"Captain," The Ambassador cleared his throat, "I believe you are owing me explanations."

* * *

Sáclair dove through the stars, dodging a weaving through the asteroid field. These pitiful morays fancied themselves sharks. He would educate them on the truth of the stars. There is always someone bigger.

Already three of them lay crippled in the stars behind him. Not dead, the ancestors had been _extremely_ adamant that he not kill other humans unnecessarily. An odd fit of eccentricity on their part but Sáclair was not foolish enough to question their wisdom.

And in truth, it wasn't fair to kill them before they'd had a chance to accept the word of the Emperor.

"Mister Andrews!" Sáclair screamed to the portly gunner and chief of the main weapons batteries, "I need an ETA on loading one of the Ambassador's planet cracker missiles."

"Sir I can't just toss the bloody thing in just any tube. The Enginseers need to go over it properly else we could blow up the whole blood ship," the portly man said apologetically as he mopped the soot from his brow on the other side of the holo-link, "I'm working as fast as I may."

"Work faster," Sáclair growled, "We need an edge over the Alliance ships as quickly as we can get one."

The Alliance ships were Imperfect but Sáclair dared not get too close. Lance weaponry, who gave these savages lance weaponry? Their ships were little more than mobile fighter carrying lance batteries, lightly armored and unshielded, however only a fool let his ship get in front of a lance battery without adequate void shields. Especially with a hull already damaged near critical areas.

Blessedly they were reliant upon machine spirits for their targeting systems and sensors. The use of cyclonic explosives had put enough ambient radiation to play all merry hell with their targeting computers. Astropathic servitors were not so easily distracted.

"Incoming contact! Grid zeta two, two four mark zero five nine," Sácomer swore angrily, "It's an Alliance warship sir!"

"How in the hell did we miss it," Sáclair shunted power to from life support to the maneuvering thrusters. He activated a general alert, "All hands, brace for impact in five seconds!"

He yanked the ship abruptly to port as one of the Alliance ships rocketed upwards, red energy lances rocketing towards the underside of the _Endless Bounty. _A sharp spike of pain shout up his chest and side as the ship analyzed the damages done. Two docking bays suffered minimal damage from a glancing hit from the Alliance ship's lance batteries.

"You bastards! You little arrogant heretical bastards," Sáclair snarled and nearly knocked out the servant bringing him a tankard of ale as he yanked the silver vessel out of the poor girl's hands. He downed the brew with a hearty swing and heaved the goblet into the distance where it collided with an unfortunate ship's servitor.

Alarms blared in Sáclair's ears as he wiped the froth from his goatee, warning that of an enemy target lock. The Alliance ship wouldn't miss twice. Sáclair lashed out and fired a salvo into an asteroid heavy with lead and cobalt, spreading radioactive sensor clouding debris and dust in his wake.

"Alright you insufferable little twit," Sáclair grinned manically and typed the safety override codes into the throne. The voices of his ancestors echoed nervously in his head, unsure about the sanity of the action he was about to take. If his timing were off by a second it would detonate the ship's engines and leave the _Endless Bounty_ to drift.

He arched his ship downwards past the Alliance ship, dropping a payload of cyclonic mines behind him. They detonated against the hull of the alliance ship, tearing through the weak struts behind the main hull, shattering the engines from the main ship and leaving it dead in the water. The force of the explosion propelled the _Endless Bounty _away from the Alliance ships and break-neck speed. Towards the gravity well of the planet.

"Throne above man," screeched Navigator Calven from where he'd braced himself on the floor in terror, "Have you lost your senses? You're going to get us all killed!"

"Ha!" Sáclair yelled joyously, "The Emperor protects my boy. Don't you remember your primary schola imperialis?"

"He protects those who protect themselves sir," Sácomer clutched at his heart as though he thought it might burst, "You're going to cause a heart attack one of these days! By the throne I swear it!" he groaned, "Incoming fighter wings, it seems the ship was carrying friends."

The Imperial fighter wings spun about like budgerigars angrily twittering and circling round with the Alliance fighters. The Imperial fighters were struggling to keep up with the Alliance fighters absurd mobility. The _Endless Bounty _was a merchant ship, not a warship. What fighters it had were intended for fighting off pirates and protecting ground convoys. Fixed wing ships could never be as maneuverable as space fighters in the stars. Blessedly the Alliance star-fighters were only armed with heavy plasma turrets, so the Imperial fighters were armored enough to stand a fighting chance.

He couldn't keep this up forever. Eventually he would be forced to make a stand against the Alliance ships, void shields be damned. The bounty was too damn big of a target to keep playing cat and mouse forever. Sooner or later he would run out of missiles or asteroids.

"The babylon station has opened fire sir!" Mr. Andrews excited voice echoed over the holo-link, his face lighting up with indecent excitement, "They're firing with all batteries sir!"

"Are we in range of their fire?" Sáclair doubted that even a station as large as the Babylon station had the range to reach them this far into the system with any accuracy.

"Their supporting fire perhaps sir!" Sácomer bounced giddily. His ample jowls jiggled with amusement, "The Babylon station has declared without equivocation that we are under their protection and they will fight to protect us. They're already opened fire on their own ships to protect us."

"Don't look a gift grox in the mouth. I was going to have to start killing ships, not disabling them," Sáclair sighed. It could still be a trap but that sort of guile seemed beyond Captain Sheridan. Sheridan was a man of black and white morality for whom the idea of treachery was high treason, "We're moving back into Babylon space. Take us into planetary orbit behind the station."

* * *

John checked what readouts were still functioning in the hopes of understanding what was going on outside the ship, "Lieutenant Corwin do we have any remaining controls that do function on the primary bridge?"

The narrow lieutenant rubbed the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, "Sir I'm struggling to just keep local stellar geography and telemetry functioning. We're going to need to move to the secondary Command and Control center as soon as possible."

"Not that it will do any good," John pulled at his hair and looked out the window and the flashes of laser-fire in the distance, "That AI was able to just override or ignore all of our command codes. It basically can control... anything with an Alliance make military override..." John slapped the broken consul eagerly, "That's it!"

"What is it commander?" The Ambassador sighed, "I still lack understanding."

John grinned widely, a plan hatching in his mind. "I have an idea. It's a crazy idea but it just might work."

"That does not expand my understanding," sighed the Ambassador as he ran his hand through his hair, "But any solution is better than none."

"I'll take that as a yes," John tapped his link, "Garibaldi. How close are you to getting though to that computer core?"

"We're about five minutes from reaching the core sir," Garibaldi's responded, "We should have it disabled in ten."

"We've got a new plan Garibaldi," John smiled roguishly, "I want you to link the AI into gold channel zero."

"Uh... sir you want me to connect this thing to _more_ systems?" Garibaldi hesitated, "Are you sure about it?"

"Just do it Garibaldi! We're going to need it for what I'm planning." John double tapped his link, "Sparky. Can you hear me."

"Loud and clear boss," the AI responded with a self-aggrandizing air, "Good to see that you've come to your senses. Now what do you need?"

"How many of the Alliance command override codes do you have in your system?"

The AI chuckled, "Enough sir. Enough. I see where you're going with this."

* * *

"Major Pierce we're getting a gold channel transmission!" The operations officer sprinted to the command chair with an official printout, "It's using the presidential channel sir, we can't shut it down. The ships computers are shutting us out of everything."

"What?" Major Pierce blinked in horror, "How did they get past the military security protocols?"

"The program had all the necessary passwords sir. We've lost control of the ship." The operations officer looked over the printout, "We've lost everything sir, at best we can do a hard shut down and restart of all systems. We'd need to have the ship shut down for an hour at the very least."

"What systems do we have control over?" Major Pierce swore angrily, "And how did this happen?"

"No idea sir. I shut down the communication system so that it can't get any worse. We've still got limited control over navigation and hyperdrive systems," The operations officer sighed, "And they send us a message. Just a single word. _Leave_."

"Sheridan's lost his damn mind," Major Pierce sighed, "All ships retreat! Lay in a course for the nearest Earth Alliance colony," he paused and looked at the Babylon station in the distance, "This isn't over Captain Sheridan. This isn't over by a long shot."

* * *

Bester watched in mounting horror as the Alliance ships turned and retreated into hyperspace through the haze of pain wracking his brain. The papers he'd made use of to authorize the use of Earth Alliance warships weren't legal in the strictest sense. This could potentially become politically inconvenient in the long term.

Unacceptable, this was unacceptable.

Alfred Bester would not be outmaneuvered by some insufferable blip. He glared at the Imperial Ambassador, lashing out with a jabbing scimitar of psychic might. The Ambassador, prepared for Bester's attack, slammed down iron walls and steel bars to block the path into his mind but his psychic protections were indelicate. Thick and forceful but full of sight imperfections. The walls were full of cracks and breaks from where they'd ground together like gnashing teeth, twisting and tightening with steely might.

Bester sped around the walls, scurrying and scratching. Verminous talons of psychic intrigue probing the dark shadows within the Inquisitor protections. He caught brief flashes from the Inquisitor's memories. Dark shadowy creatures, sightless eyes, twisting limbs, and worlds on fire. Pictures of war beyond imagining tickled at the tip of his tongue, dancing tantalizingly with pictures of psychic talents and learning beyond his wildest dreams. He scampered and scratched at the edges of Daul's mind till finally he found a deep hollow section in the back of Daul's mind where a shadowed pocket of unprotected memories lay.

It was some sort of repressed memory or dark secret, the perfect entryway into a man's mind. One cannot shield what they do not know about. Bester burrowed into the dark space and burst forward into a memory.

Bester found himself in one of the richest and most convincing memories he'd ever been inside of. Spiced meats hung from the ceiling of an ornately carved larder, filling the room with tantalizing smells of food. It was disturbingly homely and subdued to be the sort of dark pit Bester'd found. The sort of memories that were repressed in this fashion were generally hazy feelings of pain and loss, not the sort of place one wanted to admit existed let alone remember in graphic detail.

Bester examined the wall carvings of smiling animals with perplexity.

"Find something you like?" chuckled a hearty voice from behind him. Bester whipped around and saw an aging man sitting in a rocking chair whittling a bit of wood disinterestedly, occasionally brushing the shavings off his blanket. The old man puffed at his pipe, "Well did you?"

"Who in the hell are you?" Bester blinked in confusion at the vivid memory.

"Me?" the old man chuckled, "You're the only intruding in _my _house. But I suppose introductions are necessary aren't they Alfred? A strange name you picked for yourself, not really one that suits you."

Bester's brow arched assuredly, "Really old man? What would you call me?"

"Judas, the name of a fool and a traitor," The old man rose to his considerable height and towered over Bester. The pipe smoke smoldered ominously at the edge of the old man's lips, "Tell me Judas why are you here?"

Bester rolled his eyes, memories often got overprotective of the mind they were in. He waved dismissively at the memory, trying to banish it back to the chair, prodding it with his mind. He stopped in shock as the old man simply waved his attack away disinterestedly with the carving knife.

"Boy you're not half as good as you think you are and not even at tenth as clever," the old man grabbed him firmly by the neck, fingers clamped down on his larynx like a vice. Bester kicked and bit and tore at the old man's arm but to to avail. He couldn't even break the skin of the powerful memory.

"What are you?" Snarled Bester.

"I'm Bast Hilder lad. I'm the one who's about to force you to piss off back to wherever the hell it is a rat like you came from," he turned to the fire smoldering in the fireplace and smiled wickedly, "And I promise you I'll leave you with something to remember me by."

Bester struggled with all his might as the old man lowered his face into the scalding embers. They burned and blistered, scarring his flesh and searing down to the bone. Bester sank into a deep pit of embers, screaming piteously as he felt his body shred, burn, and tear down to nothing as the pit chewed and ripped at his his eyes boiled within his own skull and the pain seemed too great to bear the old man bent low and whispered into his ear, "Daul is _mine_. Never come back," and tossed him into the backness that shadows the realms of memory.

Bester snapped back into his own body, trembling and in agony. He raised his fingers to his face in horror, checking to see that the meat was still attached to the bone. His wide eyes focused on the face of Ambassador Hilder.

The Ambassador smiled, bent low and whispered into Bester's ear. His eyes glowed green and his voice was not his own but rather that of the old man, "You like what you see, little man? You think you are the master? You are child. You are child playing with your father's sword. Children should leave sword at home or else they'll get cut."

The green glow in the Ambassador's eye's flickered away. He shook his head confusedly and stood up. He cleared his throat and turned to Captain Sheridan, "It would be wise to remove him perhaps?"

Captain Sheridan glared at Bester in disgust, "Get this pathetic excuse for a man off my station. I don't care how you do it, I want him gone. _Now._"

Bester didn't even have the energy to protest as the security officers bundled him onto a stretcher and carried him towards the medical bay. He breathed laboriously and fearfully, wincing with every bump and shift of the stretcher and shuddering as he heard the haunting phantom laughter of Bast Hilder.

* * *

John straightened his uniform brushing the dust off his elbows. He looked around the CnC, staring at the damaged consuls and control panels. The entire Command and Control center was in shambles. He let loose a long low whistle, "Yeesh, this is going to be a nightmare to get under control. Lt. Corwin I need you to get down to the secondary command center and start directing traffic from there. And for the love of god get some rescue ships out to the damaged ships on the edge of the asteroid belt and tell the _Endless Bounty_ not to go around shooting the survivors."

"Oye," grunted a resentful voice from his link, "What about me? What am I? Chopped liver?"

"Oh yes," John tapped his link, "Garibaldi? Do it now."

"Hey wait a second!" Screeched the angry voice of the station's AI. The station's lights flickered on and off as the systems re-directed themselves to alternate computer terminals than the main AI core. The AI howled a piteous garbled, "No!" as it lost contact with all systems.

"Oh thank god," Lt. Corwin smiled brightly, "It's about time sir."

John quirked an eyebrow at the Lieutenant, "Do I need to issue that order a second time Lieutenant?"

"No sir," the Lieutenant led the command staff off the destroyed Command and Control center at a dead sprint. They would only have a matter of ten minutes before the system went into command lockdown and would have to be manually restarted. A manual system restart was a nightmarish process than none of them were eager to go through, under normal circumstances the data was backed up but the data back ups were kept on the same computer tower as the station's experimental AI.

The room echoed with the distant footsteps of the officers, leaving John alone in the room with the Ambassador and his bodyguard. Hilder cocked his head to the side, lips narrowed in concentration. John glared angrily, "I've had enough people in my mind today for a lifetime Ambassador. I'm tired, I'm hungry, I've got a nightmarish mountain of paperwork to write up so that I can defend myself to the Senate, I'm angry, and I'm armed. If you so much as think a kind word in my direction we'll see if your personal shield can stand up to a sustained burst."

The Ambassador chuckled politely motioning to the Skitarii. The cyborg grudgingly passed him a small silver flask. The Ambassador untwisted it, took a swig and tossed it to John, "Nothing so grandiose Captain. I was just wondering what we had done to merit such loyalty from you. I hope you'll pardon my bluntness but in the same situation my government would execute you for questioning someone of higher rank."

John took a swig from the flask and coughed, "What he hell is that?"

"I haven't got a clue," the ambassador shrugged, "A liquor that the Skitarii makes."

"I notice your English has improved drastically in the past five minutes," John scowled and tossed the silver flask back to the cyborg. He caught it with one of his facial tentacles and tucked it in one of the many folds of his robe, chittering amusedly and shaking with mirth.

"There is a power in being perceived as knowing less than you do. I will admit that my own increased proficiency is rather recent. An exchange of memory, call it a gift from your Mr. Bester. I borrowed it from him as a removed him from my mind," The Ambassador leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, "Turnabout being fair play and all. Now you still haven't answered my question. Why did you help us?"

"Duty," John sighed, "It is this stations duty to render aid to all damaged ships who ask for it, provided they are not at active war with us. You came to us as a damaged ship so we were obligated to protect you."

"Duty," the Ambassador nodded curtly, "Duty above all else. This I understand."

"You realize that this isn't over. The President of the Earth Alliance will issue an order demanding that I impound your ship and arrest you personally. If you're declared a criminal our extradition treaties with all the member worlds of the Babylon 5 advisory council races will obligate them to capture or kill your ship. Greed to obtain your technologies will be more than enough to motivate all but the Vorlons, and they aren't allies to anyone except themselves," John smiled sadly and kicked at a shattered circuit board, the silicon and metal slid lazily across the floor at his touch.

"I don't enjoy empty threats Captain," the Ambassador laughed, "As soon as the ships shields are up and running I doubt there is a ship in the Alliance fleet who could go toe to toe with the _Endless Bounty_."

"Wake up Ambassador! You can't attack the entire galaxy at once," John waved out the window to the starry sky, "How are the food supplies doing Ambassador? Still a couple tons of grain in the docking bay last time I checked. How do you plan to continue replenishing that massive stock of food your ship needs? Piracy? Invasion? Could you protect a colony with a single ship? No Ambassador you need us. You need us for the one simple thing that you haven't been able to bring yourself to admit in any of our negotiations."

"And what, may I ask, is that?" The Ambassador snorted amusedly.

"A place to belong," the Ambassador's face slackened, "You've spent so much time worrying about surviving and posturing that you've forgotten that you need to find a place in the universe to call home. Every race under the sun seems to be searching for clues about the Empire you came from, including the Vorlons. Now if the Vorlons don't know where the Empire is that means one of two things, either you made it up," John raised his hand apologetically at the Ambassador's furious look, "I didn't say you did."

"And what is the other option?" The Ambassador's voice had a dangerous edge to it but John was already too far into this situation to turn back now. In for a penny, in for a pound.

"Your Empire is so far away that even you don't know where you are. It seemed odd that you asked for so many star charts, the idea that you would have lost all of them in transit seemed ludicrous but we were so excited to meet a new race that we didn't question it," the Ambassador's face flashed from taught rage to slack acceptance so fast John feared he might suffer whiplash, "You don't know where you are, and you don't know how to get back home."

A pregnant moment passed, the ambassador simply staring hatefully into John's eyes. Hilder sighed deeply, "You're too clever for your own good Captain. That's a dangerous trait to have. I'd make a habit of curbing it before it gets you into trouble."

"You'll have to settle for it getting you out of trouble," John sighed, "There is a way out of this. It's risky and I promise you ambassador, you aren't going to like it at all, but it will work."

"Of course I won't," sighed the Ambassador, "Well as we've finally reached the point of no return there is one last matter of trust I suppose I should resolve. You've been referring to me as Ambassador these past weeks as a matter of courtesy, a kindness I appreciated. However my title is more ignoble than the one you have given me and I feel you have earned the right to know it."

"Oh," John said interestedly, "What title is that."

"I am Inquisitor Lord Daul Hilder. A high lord interrogator of the Empire and the cleanser of Boros VII" the Imperial smiled sadly, "And as you plan on having me surrender I would prefer to surrender as who I am. Not as who I have pretended to be," he chuckled at John's surprised expression, "Captain I'm not a fool. You want me to surrender to your Earth Alliance. I spit on surrender."

"Oh Inquisitor," John chuckled, "You misunderstand me entirely. Tell me Ambassador, what do you know about the League of Non-Aligned worlds?"

The Inquisitor shouted the most creative series of epithets John had ever heard, balefire spouting furiously from his eyes and mouth, "Are you insane."

"You prefer surrendering?" John tried not to look too pleased with himself as the Inquisitor balled his fists and clenched his teeth in fury.

"Oh very well," the Inquisitor groaned, "Lets get this over with."

John tapped his link, "To all members, there is an immediate meeting of the Babylon Five advisory council. _Now._"

* * *

The member races of the Non-Aligned worlds grudgingly filed into their seats, chatting and arguing as always. Not a single race had been tardy, no one wanted to risk missing the excitement this meeting promised to bring. Delenn had neither been surprised that a meeting of the Babylon Five advisory council had been called following the day's unpleasantness nor that the _Endless Bounty _sat at the heart of it all. She had, however, been astounded to discover that the rumors that the Imperial's were mostly humans was more than simply the idle gossip of wagging tongues. She had apparently been mistaken.

The man wearing the Ambassador's robes and armor was distinctly human. His face, his eyes, his nose, even his scars were clearly and visibly human. He stood in the center of the room, flanked by his entourage. But then again Delenn considered herself to be human, human and minbari. Though in truth even she did not know what that meant. Was she human, minbari, both, or neither?

Captain Sheridan rapped his gavel on the dais, "I call this session of the Babylon Five Advisory Council to order. Are all members of the council here?"

"Captain," groaned Londo as he massaged his forehead, "It's late, we all know why we're here and we're all eager to get back to bed. I call that we dispense with the normal formalities."

"Seconded," G'Kar ejaculated excitedly, "Hurry this up commander." His red eyes were alight with amusement as he tapped his thumb and forefinger on the table compulsively.

"Very well," Captain Sheridan stared around the room, "By now you're all aware of the Imperials rumored genetic makeup."

"Rumored," snorted the Abbai ambassador, "It looks like more than a rumor to me."

"Please Ambassador," The Captain rapped the gavel twice, "Let me finish. Today we will resolve the issue to everyone's satisfaction. Dr. Franklin, if you please." He motioned to the Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Franklin walked around the room, passing out transparent copies of genetic information to the Ambassadors.

"These are genetic samples taken from Dr. Gazan with his consent. They have been run through the most sophisticated testing we have available to us," Dr. Franklin pulled a remote out of his pocket and pointed it at the screen behind John. It lit up, displaying complex scientific data, "They are absolutely and unquestionably homo-sapiens-sapiens but they also clearly aren't human." The room burst into a wave of speculative chatter, the members of the Non-Aligned Worlds jabbering excitedly.

"I beg your pardon," the Imperial Ambassador recoiled as though he'd been slapped, "What do you mean by 'not human'?" Delenn smiled empathetically at the Ambassador.

Dr. Franklin tapped the remote, pulling up a cross section of Gazan's internal physiology, "You're unquestionably homo-sapiens-sapiens but you equally clearly didn't evolve on earth. There is at least thirty thousand years of divergent evolution in your genetic structures. You don't even grow an appendix near as I can tell," he pointed to the massive Imperial man, "Galut is so far diverged from the human gene pool that he wouldn't even be able to reproduce."

"Course not," grunted the giant, "Daz what women are for."

"No that's not... never mind," Dr. Franklin shook his head, "Look. For everything that matters you are clearly the same animal, but humans have only even been alive for seventeen thousand years or so. Your recorded history predates the evolutionary record of our species."

The Imperials all jabbered excitedly and confusedly in their own language. The Ambassador's aide Jak cocked his head in interest, "This is most... irregular... most unexpected."

"You don't say," chuckled the Centauri Ambassador, "So we have a bunch of Earthers not from Earth to deal with."

Captain Sheridan nodded curtly, "You see our problem. My government has instructed me not to take any diplomatic actions whatsoever on the subject."

"It seems that you're ignoring that quite spectacularly Captain." Mollari pulled out a tablet from his pocked and dropped it into a glass of water. It fizzed and spat in his hand.

"Not at all Ambassador," Captain Sheridan smiled, "The station charter requires that I inform all Ambassadors of possible communicable diseases on station. As some of your species are susceptible to diseases carried by humans I was obligated to inform you of all relevant data."

"For health reasons purely of course," G'Kar snorted in dry amusement.

"Of course," Captain Sheridan's face was picture of innocence, "What else could I mean to do."

"Certainly not putting the council into a position where we either nominate the Empire into the Non-Aligned Worlds or accept that the terrifying technologies of the Empire are soon to become purely within the control of the Earth Alliance," Londo flashed a mouth of pointed yellow teeth curved into a leering smile, "That would simply be underhanded."

"Low down, dirty, underhanded and I won't hear a word of it Ambassador," Captain Sheridan glared angrily, barely keeping the grin off his face.

"Indeed," Londo snorted, "Is there a world willing to sponsor this idea that the human is most decidedly not suggesting."

The Drazi ambassador stood up so quickly Delenn feared he'd sat on a tack. He grinned manically and hissed gleefully, "Drazi Empire welcomes Empire of Humans."

"Do we have a second?" The Captain asked excitedly. The Abbai ambassador, eager to keep shielding technology out of human hands rose her arm eagerly, "Ok then we're going to have to put it to a vote. I must abstain. All those in favor?"

A majority of the room raised their hands, more than enough for the majority vote the Empire needed. Delenn raised her own arm in the affirmative, eager to build bridges with the Empire. If they truly were human that it behooved her to know them as well as she knew the humans of Earth.

The Captain counted up the votes, nodding contentedly, "All those opposed?"

A handful of arms raised, the Gaim, the Vree and a few others. However it was the echoing metallic screech of "Never." from behind her that made her blood run cold. The Vorlon ambassador glared hatefully at the Imperial Ambassador, his voice box emitting a roaring growl of static.

Londo blinked in surprise and voiced the question on everyone's mind, "Never?"

"You do not belong," The Vorlon glared at the Ambassador as he glided out of the room. Delenn sunk into her chair trying to avoid the Vorlon's gaze. She hadn't intended to contradict the Vorlon in public. It hadn't occurred to her that these humans wouldn't be part of the Vorlon's great plan.

Londo was less phased than she, "Well now that we've had that bout of insanity can we please call this session to a close? It's either altogether too late or sinfully too early and either a drink or a bed is calling my name."

Captain Sheridan rapped the gavel three times, "If nobody else has any new business to call to the floor I will call this meeting to a close." He looked around the room but none of the member worlds raised their hand, "Very well this meeting is called to a close. I'd like to officially welcome the Empire into the League of Non-Aligned worlds. Now if you'll all excuse me I need to oversee the recovery of four damaged Hyperions, none of whom will be happy to see me." The Captain bowed politely, flashed that dazzling smile, and sauntered out of the room. He was a thrilling puzzle of a man, as kind hearted as he was devious.

The Vorlons had chosen well.

Delenn waited for the crowd of well-wishers to finish welcoming the ambassador into the Non-Aligned Worlds before she approached the Ambassador and his retinue. The Gaim ambassador hissed politely, offering a bisected hand in friendship. The Imperial Ambassador shook it politely, a forced smile plastered across his face as the handshake continued far longer than was necessary. She recognized the smile, she'd used it herself at a number of diplomatic functions when her patience was wearing thin.

"Ambassador Zas'ka'tha," Delenn politely tapped the Gaim Ambassador's shoulder, "I believe that bowing is customary in the Empire." She bowed in the Ambassador's direction and the Skitarii returned the gesture. The Gaim chittered off an apology and bowed, quickly rushing away for fear of causing another social faux pas.

Delenn smiled at the Ambassador, "Finally I have you to myself." She glanced around the room at the station security that stood intently around them in a circle, weapons at the ready, "Well relatively speaking."

The Ambassador stared back at her impassively, his face betraying no emption whatsoever. Small flickering embers of balefire danced around his face and eyes. Delenn cleared her throat, "Listen Ambassador Hilder."

"Inquisitor is my title. If you must talk to me I expect you to use it."

Delenn blinked, stunned at the man's rudeness. She smiled continued as though the awkward moment hadn't happened, "Very well then _Inquisitor_ Hilder. I am Ambassador Delenn. I have sent you a number of invitations to open up a dialogue between our people."

Inquisitor Hilder cocked his head to the side as though he'd misheard, shook his head, and laughed, "No Ambassador I think not."

"I appreciate that the Minbari and the humans have had complicated relations in the past, and with your apparent kinship you must have certain misgivings about us. But we have so much to share with each other do we not? So much to learn." Delenn's face crinkled upwards into a smile and she tutted, "Come let us start fresh."

"Ambassador I must confess I only learned about the particulars of the Earth Minbari war this past week. I have no issue with the Minbari as a whole. Well, I have no more issue with them than I do with any other species of xenos," the Inquisitor approached her, waking in a circle round her. Eyes roving over her form disapprovingly as he laughed, "What I have a problem with is you."

He grabbed a lock of Delenn's hair and flicked it upward, "You disgust me. You are a twisted thing, neither human nor alien. A mistake, a half-breed, a monster. You are a toy, created to lull humanity into complacence and forget the crimes of the recent past. You are a distraction from the horrible actions of your people."

Delenn stood in stunned shock, tears rolling down her eyes as the Inquisitor spoke her worst fears to her out loud. Her knees felt week as she feebly whispered, "No.. no.." Every moment of self doubt, every terrible nightmare. It was as though the Ambassador had distilled all of them into words and was pouring them into her ear.

"Yes a monster you are indeed," the Inquisitor plowed on uncaring of her feelings, "But worst of all you are destined to breed little monsters just like you. Half-breed creatures created to force humanity to accept a happy lie, that every creature is the same and that we can always live in peace with monsters. I am no fool she witch of Minbar. Get thee out of my sight."

"No," Delenn snarled in fury and despair, "It is you who is the monster Inquisitor. You who have cut your compassion for all things different for yourself. I know who I am. I am Delenn of Minbar and of Earth. I am of both worlds and I am stronger for it." The words sounded hollow, even on her own lips.

Delenn wiped the tears from her eyes and bowed to the Inquisitor, "My offer for opening a dialogue still stands Inquisitor. Your ignorance is no fault of your own."

The Inquisitor paid her no mind as she walked out of the room and into the transport tube. She waited for the doors to close fully before she collapsed into a ball and cried. Some hours later Lennier would track her down to where she'd been sitting in the ships garden, staring at her reflection and sobbing.

* * *

Londo was stopped mid step on his way back to his apartment by a firm hand on his shoulder, gripping hard enough to be painful. He turned around to give the fool a piece of his mind only to come face to face with the leering grin of Mr. Morden, "Ah, you. Haven't I already seen you once today? What do you want from me now Mr. Morden? It's late, surely this can wait till morning, yes?"

The human shook his head from side to side dejectedly, "I'm sorry Ambassador Mollari but we really must deal with this now, and only now. The wheels of a much greater game have been put into motion."

"Ah," Londo put his hand over his hearts, "And am I to be part of this game?"

"Yes Ambassador, that is my indent. But the key player is someone else," Mr. Morden pulled a photo of Ambassador Hilder out of his pocket. Londo recognized the photo, it was one taken the day the Imperials arrived. The Ambassador's leering skull mask wreathed in psychic flames, unsurprisingly the photo ISN chose to lead with.

"Mr. Morden," Londo massaged his throbbing temples, "It is late."

"Very well Ambassador then I won't waste too much of your time," Mr. Morden chuckled, "Suffice it to say that your continued efforts to befriend the Empire are about to become extremely valuable."

"Mr. Morden I have tolerated your allusions and vagaries on the values of the Empire for weeks now," Londo pinched the bridge of his nose in the effort to stave off the start of a headache, "Is there a particular reason you are keeping me from my bed or do you simply consider recreational sleep deprivation an amusing pastime."

"I have a favor to ask of you Mr. Mollari," Mr. Morden smiled, "A very large favor."

"What kind of a favor Mr. Morden?" Londo woke instantly. As of yet Mr. Morden had been content to simply offer impossible favors without asking for anything in return, implying future obligation. Mr. Morden could realistically demand anything of him for the services already rendered.

"The kind of favor that will have my associates in your debt for the rest of time Mr. Mollari."

Londo's face apparently betrayed his disbelief because Mr. Morden said, "I'm being entirely serious Mr. Mollari. I am going to ask a favor of you that you will find deeply distasteful. Make no mistake I will ask you to shake hands with the devil. But if you can accomplish it my associates will owe you more to you personally than they could ever repay."

"I see," Londo lied, "And what exactly is this favor that you ask of me."

"I need you to keep the Imperials alive Mr. Mollari," Mr. Morden tapped the photo, his finger resting over the Ambassador's grinning skull, "I need you to keep hide them from a, hostile competitor of my associates. A particularly aggressive competitor."

"From the Alliance you mean?" It seemed unnecessary to ask Londo for what he would already have provided for any member world of the League.

"Oh no Mollari," Mr. Morden sighed sadly, "The Alliance are the least of your worries in the days to come. There are many powers in this universe more great and terrible that those you know of. Wars that you cannot even begin to comprehend. Trust me when I say that the rivalries of the known races are soon to become a distant memory," Mr. Morden looked over his shoulder at the sound of approaching footsteps, "I should go before we're seen together. Take care Mollari and think about what I've said."

The human took his leave as suddenly as he'd arrived, leaving Londo alone and brewing with confusion. What was it about the Imperials that endeared them so to Mr. Morden? What did they have that made them so important to the plans of his associates? And most importantly, who were the Imperials endangered by if not the Earth Alliance?

"To hell with sleep," Londo grunted as he changed direction and headed for the casinos, "Liquor and diversion will suffice for today. I cannot imagine I will have good dreams tonight anyway."

* * *

A/N

I realize that this chapter was somewhat slower in being published that my previous chapters but I hope the length makes up for that. As always all reviews are appreciated, constructive reviews are adored.


	11. Chapter 11

The Inquisitor couldn't have picked a better time to abduct her if he'd tried. In the aftermath of the Drazi situation Dr. Franklin had ordered Susan off the duty roster for two days. Assuming that Garibaldi remained his scrupulously obsessive self that gave the Imperials a twenty-hour lead before they noticed she was gone. More than enough time for the Imperials to spirit her away.

Susan wanted to scream, to cry out for help, to resist but she couldn't. When she tried to speak her lips would not open, when she tried to run her legs would not work, and when she tried to cry the tears would not come. The injection had seen to that quite nicely. She'd thrashed and screamed as the Inquisitor came at her with the needle but it hadn't been enough to break the Skitarii's grip. Within moments of the needle's kiss she couldn't move any of her limbs.

Susan used the last of her energy to twist her hand into a rude gesture as she felt herself falling back into a comatose state.

Weakness overtook her and she fell into a deep somber sleep full of frightening dreams. She saw dark worlds, great ships, and twisted monsters flashing past her as she fell into a deep pit lined with fangs. Bursts of color whipped past her eyes. Brief flashes of her own past burst forth in front of her, distorted by the same haze of unnaturalness that overwhelmed every corner of her mind.

Fragmented spirals of thought, form and word wrapped and wriggled round on her powerless form like hungry pythons. They danced and sang in circles in the shape of children singing-mocking rhymes. Her family appeared around her, twisted and snake like singing in mocking tones, "Should have known, she should have known. Die, die alone, she would always die alone. The girl will always die alone."

She'd woken several times through the night when the stations alarms had sounded, lying limply on the bed and cursing her weakness. She'd shaken off her drug-induced stupor just long enough to limply swat at the bald head of Jak as he injected another syringe of the paralytic agent into her arm.

He always smiled apologetically and stuttered, "I d…do hope you understand. Th…this is for the best." She couldn't say how many hours passed before the Inquisitor returned, but when he returned he was not alone.

Gazan, the Imperial doctor, jabbed her side with some bizarre instrument. The machine beeped and whirred, green lights flashing along its sides. The instrument flashed green and whistled a Gazan's face scrunched in approval, "She'll keep. She doesn't seem to be having an adverse reaction to the paralytic agent. If we're lucky she'll resuscitate without any permanent damage to mobility."

"Good," The Inquisitor rubbed his neck, "Very good."

Susan stared back at him hatefully, thinking the most spiteful and painful things she'd like to do to him with all the force she could muster. He quirked an eyebrow at one of her more creative suggestions for the application of a knife, "You'd have to do that overhand or the whole process is wasted. You cut the femoral artery and you'll bleed the man out in minutes."

He sat down on the side of the bed, pushing a lock of fiery hair away from her face. "I am not a good man Ivanova. I do not pretend to be one. But I am not a heartless man and though you may not believe it what I do now I do out of kindness. I chose not..." the Inquisitor stared into Susan's eyes as they fearfully darted around the room looking for some way of escaping. Daul sighed sadly, "Commander Ivanova I do apologize for the indignity of what comes next but it is necessary," he nodded to the Skitarii, "Get the items we discussed."

The Skitarii nodded and walked to a thick ebony chest that sat to the left of the door. Susan tried to watch what he pulled from the chest but her field of vision was blocked by Gazan as the Imperial medic leaned over her. He rubbed at the graying mess of stubble at his chin and clicked his tongue on his teeth.

He tapped the flesh at Susan's knee, sending a jolt of agony up her spine, "Inquisitor I don't know about this leg."

"What about it?" The Inquisitor leaned in.

"If we strip the cast I fear it will break a second time. The bone fractured a bit already. It might never heal properly," Susan screamed behind her gag as he tapped a scalpel against the plaster, "Do you really want to do this?"

"The astropathic servitor didn't have a damn cast, let alone one set by the esteemed Medicus Franklin," the Inquisitor laughed, "If your goal is to be discovered immediately then, by all means, keep the cast. Otherwise Medicus Nor is more than sufficiently equipped to repair broken bones or replace them with augmentics if need be," he tilted his head, "Come to think of it. It would probably be best for us to break it now. It would go a long way for realism and be easier to heal if we made sure it was a clean brake."

Susan struggled to move her drug-addled body, trying to punch and kick at the lot of them. Hot tears streamed down her fact at the futile wobbles she could muster. Gazan pushed her back down on the bed with minimal effort, not even bothering to look at her as he asked, "With respect sir. Is that wise?"

"Perhaps not," the Inquisitor looked into Susan's hateful eyes considering the matter, "Cairn, the black one if you please."

The bed shifted from the weight of the Skitarii as he leaned in and wrapped a blindfold of black silk embroidered with golden eagles around her eyes. Darkness enveloped her as she felt Cairn shove a thick leather gag between her lips. She desperately lashed out with her mind, feeble tendrils of thought weakly grasping to those round her.

A firm grip lashed out and grabbed her probe. Susan wrenched to the side and tried to worm out of the grip, biting and scratching at the grip. The inquisitor's booming voice echoed in her throbbing head, "Enough girl! You've lost."

"No!" Susan bellowed, stabbing at the Inquisitor's mind with her own. She must have stabbed a hundred times, but each may as well have been a pinprick. The Inquisitor held firm.

The booming voice echoed in her mind a second time, brimming with satisfaction, "Such spirit! I will have use for you."

In the distant blackness beyond the blindfold the Inquisitor snarled, "Gazan give her a double dose. I don't want her waking till this is finished."

Susan felt another prick, and a slight burning sensation before the world faded into nothingness. Silent screams filled her head as she labored against her weak limbs, futility battling the nothingness.

"Break both legs for good measure Cairn. The hands too, I don't want her waking up and trying to fight her way out of this."

* * *

"Same to you too buddy," Zack deactivated the comm. channel and flipped an impolite gesture out the window in the direction of the Beijing beauty. Captain Xingjian was understandably angry at the Babylon station. The orders he'd been issued by Bester were illegal, but that didn't make thirty members of the _Beijing Beauty's_ crew any less dead, "How many more of these do we still have to get through?"

Lt. Corwin wiped his brow with his sleeve, "It looks like there are two more that will need to be repaired at the station before they can even be dragged to the dry docks by the recovery fleet."

"Oh boy," Zack sighed, "Only four more of these nightmares to co-ordinate. And with only two thirds of the fighters still in service. The pilots are going to take hell for ejecting as early as they did."

"Better lose the fighter than the pilot," the station lost a lot of good men in defense of the _Endless Bounty_, some at the guns of Imperial ship. Ships were easy to replace, there would never be another Lieutenant Warren Keffer. Zach was not looking forward to that funeral.

"Are you sure about relaxing the security procedures on the Imperial dock?" Lt. Corwin chewed his lip, "It seems like the last thing we should be doing is making it look like we're favoring a foreign government over our own armed forces."

"The faster they get the last of their property out of the cargo bay the faster the _Endless Bounty_ stops sending unarmed transports ship past where we're going to have five very angry warships. The crews of those ships are going to be hurting over their loss for a while," Probably more than a while, people never really forgave their comrade's killers. But would it be the Babylon station or the Imperials who earned the brunt of their hatred? "Best not to tempt fate."

"If you say so sir," The proximity sensor chimed, a blue light flashing on the control consul in time with the tinny whistling sensor. The Lieutenant leaned in and squinted at the readout, "We have a new contact sir."

"Another sweep of space by the carriers looking for 'ejected fighter pilots?" Any actually ejected fighter pilots had been recovered long ago but the military charters following Dilgar war stipulated that warships could never be ordered not to recover survivors of a battle after surrender. There was an unauthorized launch every two hours or so when the air group commanders conveniently forgot Sheridan's orders not to launch fighters. The searches for survivors invariably involved a fly-by of the CnC window, "It's been a while since Captain Emmett showed off."

"No sir. We picked up a weak signal coming out of deep space" Lt. Corwin typed corrections into the stations sensor computer, "I've just double checked it sir. It's neither an Earthforce nor an Imperial communication code."

"Coming from regular space?" Zack blinked in surprise and looked at the readout. Regular space travel between solar systems was uncommon for the civilized races. Even the races incapable of creating jump gates usually rented the use of more affluent race's gates rather than risk the dangers of decades traveling the void.

"Yes sir," Lt. Corwin typed a couple of commands into the computer, "Riding right on though regular space. It doesn't seem to be responding to our commands."

"Are we getting anything off it at all?" Zack ignored the flashing red light next to him heralding another communication from the _Beijing Beauty_ and pointed to the sensor readout to Lt. Corwin's right, "There. What is that?"

"That…" Lt. Corwin smiled, "Would be an audio transmission."

Zack laughed, "Pick up the phone, let's see who's coming to dinner."

"Yes sir," Lt. Corwin agreed, "Patching it through."

The transmission was grainy, it echoed with the random hiccups and pulses of radiation in space that distorted and twisted radio signals. However even mired in all that brouhaha a voice calmy chanted, "This is the Copernicus we come in peace."

Oh for the love of…. if this was another cousin race come to visit Babylon Five Zack would eat his badge. Keeping the Imperial situation under control was more than he'd care to deal with as it already was.

"Of course my day just doesn't get any easier," Zack tapped his link, "Captain Sheridan, we need you in the CnC."

* * *

Father Al'Ashir tried to twist the stiffness out of his neck. The pile of loose insulation padding he'd chosen to sleep on was serviceable, but left little in the way back support. Beggars couldn't be choosers though and down below offered little in the way of amenities. The security forces of the Babylon station were looking for Imperial loyalists, and he wasn't about to get caught. His mastery of the Alliance tongue was limited, but it didn't take a master of the language to figure out that when the armed guards stormed a cargo bay that one should hide.

Two days had passed since then. On the second day he looked out one of the windows and watched the _Endless Bounty_ exchanging fire with Alliance starships. That made his mission that much more crucial. He had to bring these people into the Emperor's light before either Sáclair or Inquisitor Hilder tired of dealing with their treachery and destroyed them.

No soul deserved to die without knowing the word and love of the Emperor.

He rubbed the spot under his robes where he'd hidden his prayer book and moneys. Praise to the Emperor it was still there. He'd feared some vagrant might slit his throat for the paltry couple of iron rings on his fingers or for his purse but not nearly as much as he feared someone might take his prayer book. The gilded edges of the cover and hinges would be more than enough motivation for theft.

The destitute wretches in down below needed the word of the Emperor just as badly as any he had ever seen. There was poverty in the slums of the _Endless Bounty_ to be sure, however he hadn't seen hide or hair of anything that resembled an almshouse or a public kitchen where the poor might get some broth. As soon as he established the local parish, that would have to change.

It was the challenge few missionaries got, the opportunity to bring the word of the Emperor to those who were truly ignorant of it. Many Imperial citizens turned their backs on His word at some point or another. If faith were easy then there would be no need for the priesthood at all, but few were ignorant of it even if they were indifferent to it. But these Alliance humans were totally and utterly virgin territory, ripe for His word.

It was the chance of a lifetime, the mission he'd dreamed of since he first entered the clergy. He was living out his dreams, even though it was somewhat less glamorous work then he'd hoped for. This was a miserable space, what little light shone from the reactors was regularly punctuated by the rhythmically spinning exhaust fans of the station. It was the sort of space suited for servitors and little else.

Yet people lived here, people who he would teach. In fact two of the livelier inhabitants of down below were battling over a small scrap of something, twisting and turning on the deck in front of him.

"Childrens! Childrens fighting is worthless!" Al'Ashir croaked in his broken English. His plain robes snagged on sharp bits of refuse as he rushed over to them, making him stumble, "Stop! Stop now!"

The two boys continued to paw at each other angrily till a third man emerged from a rotting pile of garbage screaming incoherently. The boys gave up their wrestling match and fled from the monster covered in rotting food.

"Aaaarrrggh! Through the walls. Its coming through the walls," Luker screeched, his eyes wide and out of focus. He blinked and then stared into Father Al'Ashir's eyes, almost pleadingly, "Ozones… I need some ozones."

Al'Ashir did not know what an Ozone was, but judging by the way the man searched his pockets frantically he suspected the man was recovering from some sort of narcotic. He smelled foul and looked dirtier than he smelled. The man looked up at Al'Ashir disappointedly, "No ozones."

"Are you well my childrens?" Al'Ahishir said tentatively, "Is there helping I can be doing?" Al'Ashir knew he was butchering the Alliance language, but he hoped that perhaps his tone of voice might calm the man, ease him of some of his pain.

The man doubled up in pain clawing at his eyes, "No. Get out of my head." Father Al'Ashir just barely resisted the urge to grab the man by his arm. Touching the man before gaining his trust would only exacerbate the situation.

"Where are you?" the man looked around wildly, staring at everything. He rushed over to the wall and started grabbing bits of refuse at random, flinging the garbage wildly about the hall and screaming excitedly, "There you are!"

Father Al'Ashir felt his heart breaking for this poor man. The man's fingers bled from grasping at broken glass and shards of metal as he ripped things away from the window with wanton abandon, desperate to see the stars, "There you are."

"Oh you poor, poor man," Al'Ashir mumbled in Damascan, "What has happened to you my child? What has happened?"

The man fell to his knees and clutched his hands together pleadingly. He started to pray to his pagan god, fumbling over the words in his haste, "blessed mary, hallowed be, thy kingdom done, thy will something, on Earth as it is in space. Hail mary father of," the man stopped and flung himself to the floor sobbing and screaming, "Gaaahhh."

"Hush," Father Al'Ashir fell to his knees and bushed the man's scraggly hair out of his face. "Do not worry my childrens." He said in what little English he knew, "You are loved by one greater than what you fear." Al'Ashir grasped the man's hands, "Nothing to fear."

The man shook his head and screamed, "No, no, no! I have to warn them! It's here don't you see! It's here."

The man stood up drunkenly and staggered off into the distance at an alarming pace. Without even thinking about it twice, Father Al'Ashir was running after him as quickly as he could. His legs protested violently, he wasn't as spry as he'd used to be but he'd found the man most in need of the Word and he'd be damned if he was about to let a lost soul get away from him.

* * *

"You're late Inquisitor," John looked up from his massive stack of paperwork, deeply grateful for the reprieve even if it was in the form of the Inquisitor and his Skitarii companion. He had half a mind to simply burn several hundred sheets of reports in favor of just facing court-martial. Only the Earth Government could be so horribly backwards as to want him to carbon copy his handwritten reports in triplicate in addition to the normal reports, "I'd almost given up on you showing up at all."

"I was unavoidably detained," The Inquisitor pulled at the sleeve of his coat, brushing off an errant speck of dust, "In light of the recent unpleasantness your Mr. Garibaldi felt it was wisest for us to remove the remaining cargo I have in your station. Certain personal items required extra preparations," he looked to the corner of the room, "Miss Winters."

"Inquisitor Daul," she responded frostily. If looks could kill she would have destroyed the Inquisitor on sight.

John put down his pen and steepled his fingers, "Then you're planning on leaving?"

"Nothing so dramatic is planned Captain. As you so elegantly put it 'where would I go?" his voice betrayed more than a little bitterness, "However it seemed a wise choice."

The Inquisitor edged towards John's desk and motioned vaguely at the mountain of paperwork, "If this is an inconvenient time I could return later Captain. You seem to be rather occupied at the moment. Not all of it is due to us I hope."

"A fair amount of it, yes. But stay, there's something I need you to see," Sheridan flipped a switch on his desk, lowering the portrait of President Clark and exposing the wide view screen embedded in the wall, "I received this message from my government this morning with instructions to deliver it to you personally. Please understand that as a priority one transmission I cannot replay this."

"I presume you've seen it then?" Flecks of balefire flickered about the man's shoulders and face, giving an iridescent and distracting quality to his continence. His face crinkled into an amused smile at John's indignant expression, "Were it a transmission you were expected not to see you would have delivered it to my quarters Captain. You're feigning a lack of knowledge and an inability to pause it so that you may gauge my expressions and reactions. I don't need to be a psychic to understand human nature Captain."

John opened his mouth to disagree but was cut off by a dismissive wave by the Inquisitor, "Oh don't bother denying it Captain. I'm not angry about it, truth be told it's what I would have done were the tables turned. But do me the common courtesy of assuming I'm as devious as you are," the Inquisitor chortled, "I'm impressed at your daring if the truth be told."

John, who was being neither daring nor dastardly, decided that it correcting the Inquisitor's presumptions about his own cleverness was not in his own interest, "No offense was meant."

"Nor was any taken," the Inquisitor waved and ornate ebony cane topped with a ruby the size of a man's thumb towards the view screen, "Well let's get on with this then. I have still a half dozen meetings with my fellow Non-aligned world members to be getting on with."

John double tapped his link and pointed it at the view screen, activating the automated message on the crystal. The smiling face and cheerful expression of President Clark greeted them, sitting at the desk of his office in Geneva. He'd clearly posed himself in such a way that he could look as non-threatening as was possible in his body language, but still show the massive mock up of a Hyperion Class starship hanging from his wall. The President smiled into the camera, "Ambassador Daul Hilder I presume?"

He chuckled and leaned back in his chair, "I hope you'll forgive me for not personally having attempted to contact you previously. The affairs of state often limit ones ability to chat with new neighbors. I just wish we were meeting under better circumstances."

The bald statesman sighed exaggeratedly and shook his head. His face was a mask of deepest sorrow, "I want to assure you Ambassador of my greatest apologies. The attempt to seize your ship was done without the knowledge or consent of the military leadership of the Earth Alliance. I hope that we can work past this misunderstanding in order to achieve stronger ties of friendship between our two governments."

"The officer responsible for this whole mess _will_ be held accountable for his actions in a court of law. I assure you of that," the President punctuated every sentence with a jab of his pen in the direction of the camera, as though he were brandishing a sword, "I will not stand for the legal system being subverted in this manner. This is not how my administration operates." John carefully converted his laugh to a cough, turning to the side to hide his own incredulity.

Clark punched his fist into the palm of his left hand; leaning so that the presidential office's model of the Hyperion cruiser was just visible behind him, "There's no reason for this situation to escalate any farther. Men have died from your ship, men have died from my fleet, but this is the desperation of a single man who was simply overzealous in conducting his own duties. We share a common humanity and should act as such."

He smacked his desk jovially with the open palm of his hand, the room echoing with the cheery crack of his ring against the mahogany, "To demonstrate the seriousness of our commitment to peace between our worlds I am giving blanket amnesty to all the officers of Babylon Five who came to your aid and attacked Earth Force vessels against the orders of a superior officer. Captain Sheridan, you did your duty better than anyone could have expected of you, well done sir." The President saluted emphatically. John awkwardly returned the salute, trying to focus more on the compliment than on Clark's likely involvement in the murder of former President Santiago.

The President smiled widely, "We have much to learn from you and, I hope, we have much to teach you as well. We may not be from the same world but we are brethren. Both strong, powerful, and able peoples capable of action." The President stood up and held out his hands in a gesture of friendship, "Welcome to the neighborhood."

The video cut out abruptly, leaving the spinning Earthforce logo in its place. A few pregnant moments of silence passed before the Inquisitor snorted and stood up, "It would seem that the meaningless barking of planetary governors sounds the same in any language," he shot an incredulous look at John, "Does your chief of state actually believe that a five minute picture recording in which he rambles obtusely about us being brothers out of one side of his lips will make me forget that he would gladly have praised Mr. Bester out of the other side had the mission succeeded? And honestly? A recording? Have the dignity to speak to my face."

"I cannot speak to the motivations of the President," Nor did he wish to. John would not bad mouth Clark in front of the Inquisitor but he was not obligated to defend him either.

"Hum," the Inquisitor pondered the moment, rubbing absently at the stubble about his chin, "Can't you. I wonder." The Inquisitor fixed him with a piercing stare that John feared could see right through him, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

"Stay out of my head Inquisitor." John reached back and rested his hand on his side arm. Thross' metallic limbs creaked ominously. The pistons in Thross' arms twitched nervously, flexing cybernetic fists ready to tear John limb from limb at a moment's notice. Let him try it, thought John. He'd placed a satchel charge behind the wall Thross preferred to lean on, not enough to kill Thross but probably enough to give John enough time to get out of his office.

"I do not need to read your mind to get inside your head Captain. You should realize that as a military governor," the Inquisitor pulled some sort of hard candy out of one of his inner pockets. He popped it between his lips and sucked it greedily, "Nor do I need to be an expert in reading facial expressions to tell that you aren't President Clark's most ardent of supporters, even if you are loyal to your government."

"He's telling the truth," Talia admitted grudgingly, "I haven't felt even a passive scan. Unless he's very subtle and able to hide better than anyone I've ever met he hasn't done anything… yet."

The Inquisitor snorted in an undignified manner, "Miss Winters, if I wished to read the Captain's mind I wouldn't waste time trying to hide from your… limited abilities. I would simply overpower your talents and take what I needed from his mind."

"_Enough_" John cut in. Since the Psi Corps had attempted to arrest him the Inquisitor had taken every possible chance to inform Miss Winters of just how inferior of a psychic she was by comparison, "Inquisitor you will _not_ insult my staff. Miss Winters is not responsible for the actions of Mr. Bester and I will not allow you to belittle her for your own amusement."

"Perhaps it would be best for us to continue with other business then Captain," the Inquisitor said between chews of his hard candy, "I have other meetings to get to after this one."

"Have you finally agreed to meet with the Narn Ambassador?" G'Kar had been in John's office at least twice claiming that the Centauri had poisoned the Imperials against the Narn Empire. For all John knew G'Kar was right. Virtually all the supplies going to the Imperial ship were of Centauri origin or funded by Centauri gold. However John could not force the Imperial Ambassador to negotiate with anyone he the Inquisitor did not wish to.

"Yes, I have," the Inquisitor chuckled and looped his thumbs through the pockets of his coat, "In truth I did not even realize that I'd been remiss in meeting with the Ambassador. I'd delegated the duty of meeting with some of the more," he snapped his fingers searching for the correct word, "Ah, yes, some of the more esoteric races like the pak'ma'ra to Vira'capac. When he brought me the ambassador's request I'd been distracted by the injury of Danzig, we had a difference of opinion, I slapped the data crystal out of his hand and in all the excitement of the past days I must confess it had slipped my mind. Jak discovered the invitation to open a dialogue only this morning."

"I'm sure G'Kar will be thrilled to hear that. He's been looking forward to talking with you for some time." The Inquisitor shrugged disinterestedly at the prospect.

"There is still the matter of your man in the brig," John crossed his arms, "He killed a half dozen sentient beings on a whim. I want him brought to justice."

"Captain you can no more bring him to justice than you might bring a malfunctioning transport to justice. He is equipment that has been sabotaged. Don't let the human shape fool you."

"You do realize I'm going to need independent medical verification of the non-sentience of the… servitor?" John stumbled over the word awkwardly. What little John understood about how the Empire made servitors caused him unease.

"I want my property back Captain." Flames flickered in an angry crown at Inquisitor Hilder's brow, "This is non-negotiable."

"Inquisitor your 'property' _killed _people. What part of that hasn't sunk in yet? I don't know how they deal with criminals where you come from but we aren't about to let him go just because you tell us to," Miss Winters cut in exasperatedly, "Our legal system demands that all cases get investigated fully."

The Inquisitor burst into a jovial barking laugh, "How foolish of me to be so lenient to those who defy the law. Very well, do your tests. Have your justice. Kill it if you must but try to leave it in once piece so that when I hand the remains over to Magos Frist she isn't starting from scratch on the rebuild."

John deeply hoped the Inquisitor was joking. He still hadn't managed to get a grip on what would set the Imperials into fits of laughter. They truly were a strange, strange people.

The Inquisitor jabbered quickly in the Imperial language to his bodyguard. The stoic Mr. Thross nodded sagely and the Inquisitor turned back to John, "Really all I need left in tact is the head. Do what you will with the rest."

Less of a joke than John had hoped, "You'll have to direct all questions to Mr. Garibaldi. This matter is under his jurisdiction."

"Ah yes," the Inquisitor nodded approvingly, "The formidable Mr. Garibaldi. I regret that I only have knowledge of the man by virtue of his reputation. Magos Frist was quite… vocal on the subject of Mr. Garibaldi."

"I stand fully behind Mr. Garibaldi's decision to remove her," it was still a matter of speculation as to how the Magos had accessed restricted files through a public terminal. The security experts he'd spoken to in Geneva initially thought he was playing a prank on them when he'd asked. They had not, as of yet, been able to define or replicate the manner in which Kerrigan accessed the station's computer core, "I cannot have people endangering station operations."

"I understand entirely Captain, I'm just astounded that the Magos ended up finding someone more stubborn and hard headed than she. Were I not already sure that your Mr. Garibaldi is not a psychic I would suspect the use of psychic compulsion was required. The idea that someone could remove Kerrigan from a machine she wanted to study against her will had never occurred to me, not without the assistance of a small army and perhaps an orbital strike," He exchanged an amused glance with his bodyguard, "Most certainly not by just 'telling her it was time to go."

"Mr. Garibaldi is a persistent man," Miss Winters examined her gloves with measured disinterest, "A hard man to go up against."

John's linked chimed and he raised it to his ear, "What is it?"

"Captain Sheridan, we need you in the CnC." Zack Allen said insistently over the link, "There's something you should see."

"I'll be there in a moment," John deactivated his link and smiled apologetically at the Inquisitor, "I'm sorry Inquisitor Hilder, we're going to have to cut this meeting short. I'm needed elsewhere."

The Inquisitor's eyes were focused on a blank wall of his office in wrapped concentration, utterly oblivious to John. "Inquisitor?" John tried a second time, "Inquisitor?"

The Inquisitor's focus snapped back to John, his face briefly a rictus of spite. In an instant it was gone and all that remained was the calm paternal face of Daul Hilder John had come accustomed to, "I'm sorry I was miles away for a moment."

"I need to go Inquisitor. I have pressing business elsewhere that cannot wait."

"No," the Inquisitor said with resolute agreement as he stared into the distance. His lip twisted up in disgust, "No it cannot."

"Very well, we'll pick this up later in the day then," John shook the Inquisitor's hand firmly, "Good day Inquisitor."

"Good day Captain," the Inquisitor stared back from the wall staring directly into the Captain's eyes, almost pleadingly, "Captain, remember some things are best left undisturbed and undiscovered."

"You know something I don't?"

"Of that Captain, I have no doubt."

* * *

Lennier froze at the entrance to the garden, unsure if he should enter or not. He'd adopted the habit of going to the gardens once a day when Delenn meditated in private. He used the time to review the day's agenda and found the fresh air of the gardens to be beneficial to his thought processes. It required either diplomatic or military clearance to enter the garden so he could generally rely upon it being abandoned.

This morning he had company. The fearsome lithe form of Vira'capac stood in the center of the garden cooing with amusement as he played with his hounds. He was playing some sort of odd game with a large hunk of meat attached to the end of a stick. Whenever one of the hounds would get close enough to take a bite of the meat he swiped hard with his talons and quills, trying to stab them.

The hounds barked and crooned joyously as they dodged, weaved and snapped at the hunk of meat. Vira'capac replied eagerly with his own yips, whistles, and twittering barks, clearly enjoying the dangerous game as much as his hounds. Lennier winced as one of the hounds came dangerously close to biting through Vira'capac's leg tendon.

The Kroot stopped abruptly and looked at Lennier, his hounds stopping in eerie synchronicity. The meat on the stake remained in Vira'capac's hand, seemingly forgotten. As they all stared at him in the same way they'd stared at the bleeding hunk of flesh with their unfeeling reptilian eyes Lennier couldn't help but notice their sharp beaks and prominent talons with dread.

He swallowed nervously and smiled, bowing politely, "Good day to you Vira'capac. I hope I am not intruding."

Vira'capac tilted his head to the side, parrot like, examining him intently. He sniffed twice then relaxed, barking and tossing the hunk of meat to the side for the mastiffs to fight over, "No intrusion was made Lennier of the Third Fane of Chudomo."

"You have me at an advantage it seems," Lennier focused on Vira'capac, drowning out the wet smacking chomps to his left as the hounds tore hunks of flesh off and swallowed them whole, "I do not know the name of your caste else I would gladly do them honor as well."

"Wisdom your race has." Vira'capac sighed, "See value in peace you do. A pity."

"Wisdom is never a shame Vira'capac." Lennier smiled, "Nor is peace."

"If you were a foolish race you might have tried to fight me when you felt danger. If you tried to fight me I could battle you to the death and consume you," the quills at the back of Vira'capac's head twitched, causing the many beads and baubles to clatter against each other. Lennier noticed with discomfort that they seemed to be carved out of the finger bones of sentient species.

"Consume me?" Lennier eyed the hunk of meat warily.

"It is the flesh of an Ogryn who died in battle against the Alliance. Not my kill but a worthy death deserving of continuing into the next generation. A rare gift from the Inquisitor," Vira'capac looked at his hounds lovingly, "We take in the best of those we consume and change, we adapt. We consume the strong to become strong, we consume the quick for their speed, we consume the dangerous for their potency but rarely do we consume the wise. The wise are usually clever enough not to fight when it is not needed," he hooted with laughter and clapped Lennier about the shoulder jovially, "Just as well that wisdom is better earned than given or we would never be wise."

"I presume that you're not planning to eat me then," Lennier said in a hopeful voice. He suspected he'd be able to overpower the Kroot but he had his doubts about the hounds.

"Not today Lennier of the third Fane of Chudomo," he sat cross legged on the grass and motioned in front of him, "You will sit and I will tell you of my people. I shamed you by naming your brood before naming mine."

"You did not shame me," Lennier bowed his head as he sat, "You flatter me that I am worthy of notice. I had not believed your embassy paid much attention to my people. Inquisitor Hilder's last encounter with my government was… unpleasant." Lennier did not bother to disguise the venom in his voice for the Inquisitor. Delenn had cried for hours after whatever it was Daul said to her.

"The Imperials hear much and listen to little. They are too caught up in who they were and what they fear, but they live in a world of secrets and danger," Vira'capac shook his head morosely, "But I am Kroot. Kroot is different. I will tell you of the Kroot."

"Why?"

"Because I am lonely. Because I am bored. Because I am trapped," the Kroot longingly looked to the stars, "Because one day my people will reach these stars and they need to know I lived a worthy life so that I can continue."

"Continue where?"

Vira'capac pointed to the hounds, "To the next generation of my people. Just as the ogryn continues to my brood cousins."

"You… _want_ them to eat you?" Lennier recoiled and eyed the door apprehensively. It probably wasn't worth it to run, it might trigger some innate predatory response.

Vira'capac laughed, "Lennier of the Third Fane of Chudomo. You are wise but you have much to learn. So much to learn."

* * *

Vir tried to make himself as invisible as was possible at the edge of the bazaar. The guy standing on top of the bar across from him was unquestionably a raving mess. Smelly, scraggly, and unkempt, he looked like someone's worst nightmares about destitution and mental illness. And boy did he have a pair of lungs on him, "Hail to the Lord and the refuse you miserable sinners may be destroyed."

He waved his arms, jumping down from the bar and scattering the passing shoppers as they fled his ravings. He danced just out of reach of a second man wrapped in the robes of some sort of clergy and screamed, "An army of darkness, soldiers of the Devil or something like that. We're all in grave danger! A pox upon this station."

He wriggled out of the clergyman's grip and rushed Ambassador G'Kar as he meandered past, "You! A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit unless its got bad roots."

"Please I have troubles enough," G'Kar continued to walk, waving the smelly lunatic away from him. The clergyman continued to try and talk sense into the lurker, speaking soothingly in heavily accented English, "Come now childrens. This is no time for joke. Calm. Calm."

"I have walked in the valley of the shadow of death," the lurker sermonized, waving his arms wide and calling to the heavens. The clergyman tried to get the man into a full nelson but he simply wriggled out of his grip, he was too covered in filth to get a decent hold.

"Good!" Ambassador G'Kar picked up the pace, "Keep on walking."

"Hurry Ambassador. He's gaining on you," yelled Londo Mollari from across the bazaar, thoroughly entertained by the Narn Ambassador's discomfort. Unfortunately for him this only served to bring himself to the lurker's attention. The lurker ran up to Londo, caressing his crest of hair lovingly, "You with the hair."

Londo, alarmed either by the man's odor or his caresses, grabbed fistfuls of jewels from the vendor he'd been perusing, tossed his credit chip at the man and fled away as fast as his legs would take him. The lurker tried to follow but was intercepted by the timely intervention of Mr. Garibaldi.

The lurker struggled in Mr. Garibaldi's grip, "Now unless you have a class C missionary license its time for a little R and R."

"There is no shelter, it's coming, it's coming," the lurker jerked wildly in Garibaldi's grip, trying and failing to get away. Mr. Garibaldi was stronger than he looked.

"Yeah yeah, I'm sure." the Earther shook his head amusedly and looked up at the clergyman, "Hold on a second. I know you! You're the Imperial who hopped customs a couple days ago."

The clergyman blinked in apprehension, turned and tried to run away, tripping over his own robes in the process. Mr. Garibaldi sighed, grabbed the clergyman by the back of his robes and frog marched the two of them out of the Bazaar, "If it's not one thing it's another, if it's not another thing it's both. Once, just once, I want a simple quiet day. It isn't too much to ask is it? Really?"

"So do I give this credit chip to you or is it a gift?" Vir turned around in surprise. He'd actually forgotten about the Brakiri who owned the jewelry shop. The amused Barkiri held out the credit chip in one hand and an receipt for an exorbitant fee in the other.

"The jewelry ambassador Mollari took isn't worth a quarter this price!" Vir protested. It was practically highway robbery.

"Look buddy, my business is mostly haggling. You stick around to haggle the price down, you get a better price. You run off with my merchandize and I double my price just because you're pissing me off. Either take the chip or I add another charge for wasting my freaking time," he waved the chip towards his cash register threateningly.

"I'll take it," Vir snatched it out of his hand, "But you'll hear from the Ambassador about this."

"I'd love to. Tell you what. I'll save us both some time. Tell him 'No refunds' from me in advance will ya'," the Brakiri shooed him with a flourish of his hands, "Now get away from my store, you're scaring away my customers."

Vir made a halfhearted attempt at a rude gesture but ended up turning it into an insolent wave goodbye halfway through. Vir had never really been able to muster the sort of venom necessary for rudeness; it was part of why his family found him ill suited to politics. It was his own fault for not joining in on the family quarrels he supposed.

He looked down at the credit chip in his hand and chewed on the inside of his lip. Chances were that the Ambassador expected him to continue shopping for the Ambassador in spite of Mollari's hasty retreat, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what was on the Ambassador's shopping list. Never mind, he would just buy enough alcohol and recreational substances that the Ambassador would simply forget anything else he'd wanted Vir to buy.

He adjusted the necklace beneath his shirt. He hadn't really meant to wear the necklace that the techno mages had given him. It was an ugly and morbid thing. Yet he could not bring himself to be parted from it. The warnings of Eldric still ran round in his head. He'd taken it to several jewelers, none of whom could identify either the stone in the center or the bone.

He'd checked the data crystal discarded by Londo in the hopes it might hold some answers but it was encoded by some form to techno-sorcery to open for Mollari and Mollari alone. Whenever he tried to open it the data terminal he used displayed a message. "This is not for you." As much as he desired to see what was on the crystal he felt that trying to hack into a data crystal designed by a Technomage would be counter intuitive.

Vir wandered past a stall selling brandy at well over three times the price it was worth. The owner must have been convinced all aliens were either too lazy or incapable of checking the prices of other stalls. Judging by the small crowd of people milling about in front of it he probably wasn't that far off base.

Well, best to get on with it. Chances were that there would be a liquor vendor with prices resembling sanity somewhere on station. If not, then it was the Ambassadors credit chip not his. The gods would forgive him some pettiness.

* * *

"Captain we cannot ignore the facts. Someone in the command structure _is_ a traitor. Someone in the senior staff," Donat growled in frustration. Why Sáclair was being so damnably stubborn about this was beyond him. Someone in the senior staff had provided security codes to the Amon Sui saboteurs, allowing them to commit a precision attack on the generators and shielding systems. It was simply a happy accident that the Earth Alliance attacked and forced the Amon Sui partisans back into hiding.

"Donat the Amon Sui were more than capable of getting old codes from the system before. Our machine spirit is absent minded, the dead do not always get their access codes removed. Even centuries later I suspect the first captains access codes still function," Sáclair rubbed at a tuft of hair on his chest that was poking out from the space in his robes. The Captain, disheveled and only half awake took another grateful sip of recaff and eyed Donat distastefully, "I fail to see how this jumps to one of our officers being a traitor."

"Sir the codes they used were _new. _They hadn't been entered into the system for more than a couple of hours before they were used," Donat unfurled a scroll of technical information across the table, being careful not to smudge the ink. It was freshly transcribed by one of the data servitors and the ink was not quite yet dry. The penmanship of the servitor was dubious enough without smudging his writing, "Someone with access had to enter our systems and change the data entries."

"Access doesn't necessarily mean an officer Donat. The old families all have some level of access to the main computers. You know as well as I do that the noble houses have their 'secret' access codes to the mainframe," he chuckled dryly, "Though I suppose those would have already appeared on the logs wouldn't they."

"Indeed sir," Donat smiled, "Making sure that we get logs of the 'secret' activities of the noble houses was one of Kerrigans better ideas."

"It also means that the tech priests must be under suspicion for this. Especially considering how many of them were previously in the employ of the Amon Sui at some point or another," Sáclair smiled as a serving girl arrived with a plate of eggs and some sweet smelling salted meats, "Ah fantastic! I'm starving."

The serving girl turned to Donat, "Will Mr. Enzo be wanting a plate as well."

Donat eyed the egg mash Sáclair was greedily stuffing into his face with a mix of hunger and apprehension, "I wasn't aware than any of the birds on deck twelve survived."

"They're from the latest shipments. Some bird from the Alliance home world… Ostrich or something to that effect, strange looking bird but the flesh is positively succulent. If you want some there's more than enough. The Throne blessed birds lay eggs the size of my head," he chewed the salted meat with a pleased look on his face, "The meat isn't half bad either."

"It's gotten the all clear from medical?" Donat licked his lips, "It does look quite good."

"Another plate then," Sáclair nodded to the serving girl, "I have to confess that for such a strange looking animal they are a vast improvement over the inbred strains of grox we were relying upon before. I just wish they weren't so insufferably violent."

"Violent sir?" Donat gladly accepted a generous helping of scrambled egg and salted meat from the serving girl. It had been hours since his last meal, "How big of a bird is this?"

"A good two meters tall with talons more than capable of gutting a man on its feet. Nothing the quartermaster's staff can't deal with but not an animal to be trifled with," Sáclair laughed, "Apparently he's started nesting them as guard animals in front of the ship's granaries to keep out intruders."

"Guard birds sir?" Donat rubbed his eyebrow in incredulity. He had a hard time imagining the hardened criminals of the _Endless Bounty_ being intimidated by oversized birds.

"Well we lost most of the dogs and unless you want the tech priests to start having to devote repair time to constricting cyber mastiffs in addition to every other damn thing we have to fix on ship then it's a workable solution," Sáclair straightened up stock still, "By the Throne that hurt!"

"Sir?" Donat blinked in confusion then made an 'oh' of comprehension with his lips at the sight of a silver cable running down Sáclair's arm, "Sir how long have you been linked up with the ship?"

"Since the repairs started," Sáclair winced slightly, "I need to keep a close eye on the progress of repairs, and I'm not going to be caught with my pants down for another Throne cursed sabotage."

"Sir I must insist that you remove yourself from the ship immediately!" Donat could have punched him. Linking with the ship for extended periods of time was dangerous. The human brain was never designed for the volume of data the ship analyzed. Every moment that the captain spent linked into the ships core processes increased the chance that he would get trapped within a rampant data flow. At best he would go hopelessly insane, at worst he would explode the ship with a stray thought.

"I know what I'm doing Donat," Sáclair clutched the cable in his arm possessively. His fingers shook slightly as he held it in place, though it might just have been the alcohol, "I know how to do this safely."

"Sir _nobody_ knows how to long term link into the ship safely. That you haven't gone totally insane already is nothing short of a miracle. Now you will unhook yourself from the system and get some proper rest or Throne help me I will get Nor and have him sedate you for the next week!" Donat pounded his fist on the table.

Sáclair glared angrily and swatted his cup of recaff across the room where it shattered against the wall. The recaff dripped down an ancient tapestry, staining an embroidered image of Ixxac the Reveler. "Did I ask you for your opinion on the matter Mr. Enzo?"

"You did not have to sir. As your second in command and as your friend I am obligated to stop you from being a danger to yourself and others," Donat pleaded with Sáclair, "Sir do not force me to make this a matter of official record. You know as well as I do how tenuous your position is already. If I have to relieve you of command the nobility may well rebel even if the Amon Sui don't."

"How dare you?" Sáclair ripped the cable out of his arm in fury, strode over and slapped Donat across the face in fury, "How dare you? I am your captain! I am your liege lord! I will not allow you treat me in this manner. You traitor!"

Donat looked sadly back at Sáclair, the slap deadened by his paralyzed face. Sácliar was capricious at the best of times but he'd never actually hit Donat before, "_My liege_ you are acting like an impudent child. And if _my liege_ touches me again I will be perfectly happy to have Sergei come in from the hallway and assist me in forcing_ my liege_ into bed where his wife will more than gladly assist me in tying _my liege_ to the bedpost and sedating him."

"You insufferable… impossible… stick in the mud," Sánclair floundered around searching for any sort of insult applicable to Donat. His shoulders drooped and he deflated, losing some of his swagger. He sighed and looked Donat in the eyes, "You're right my friend. I've… I've spent too much time linked to the ship. My emotions have gone beyond my own rational mind's control. My words were ill chosen."

"My _liege_ has no need to apologize," Donat said insincerely, "Now we must sit down and figure out how to plug up what is obviously a hole in security, be it a traitor in the command staff or not."

"Donat," Sáclair sighed, "We must find this leak before the Inquisitor turns his attention from the Alliance. I cannot live through another damned round of him questioning my ship… my staff… my family…" He looked to Donat with wet eyes, "I cannot live through it a second time Donat. I won't let him do it. I'll blow the damn ship up first, honor be damned."

"Sir. If it comes to that I'll kill him myself," Donat said the words without thinking and realized, with no small amount of alarm, that he meant them, "Enough children have died for his Throne cursed cause. To the Eye with Inquisitor and to the Eye with Faust."

* * *

"Just got the message?" Captain Sheridan looked up and smiled at Michael as the Security Chief entered the CnC. The Captain and Lieutenant Corwin were crowded around the Lieutenant's station intently examining the incoming ship.

"Any idea where it's from?" Michael leaned in. Whatever this Copernicus was, it was speaking English, which meant it was human. Why humans would be out this far into deep space undeclared on any flight plans was anyone's guess.

"Not yet sir," Lieutenant Corwin scratched his head in confusion, "And for the life of me I can't identify the make or model of the ship.

"Why didn't it use the jump gate?" Ships didn't travel through space without using a jump gate, not unless they had some sort of a death wish. There was just too much that could go wrong. In addition to the various pirates, hooligans, and slavers that tended to roam the dark spaces between gates there were billions upon billions of natural phenomenon capable of destroying even the strongest of warships in an instant.

"That's what we're trying to figure out." Captain Sheridan smiled amusedly.

Lt. Corwin typed several command macros into the station systems, "Probe bot 2 in place for a longitudal scan. We're trying for a visual ID now."

The screen flashed and switched to the camera mounted on the robot. The Copernicus suddenly snapped into view. It was a primitive ship, barely more than a cargo hold slapped onto a set of rocket engines and a fusion reactor. It was the sort of primitive and unsophisticated design one associated with a pre-hyperspace society still constructing ships on the planetary surface.

"Those look like letters," Michael pointed to a small section of the screen, stopping the image and bringing the letters into focus. The blurred and charred letters were marred by decades of space debris and radiation to the point of being unreadable.

"Ah," Captain Sheridan snapped his fingers in comprehension, "It's English. It should say USS."

"Earth sir?" Lieutenant Corwin blinked, sharing a look of confusion with Michael. Michael shrugged, he hadn't the vaguest clue what Sheridan was yammering about.

The Captain nodded, "Check your history. Ships like this were used in deep space exploration back before we got jump gate technology from the Centauri."

Lt. Corwin looked at the ship in shock, "That was over one hundred years ago, what's it doing all the way out here?"

"Things were pretty primitive back then," Captain Sheridan shrugged, "Maybe it missed a thruster firing or went off course."

"It's been adrift ever since," Michael looked sadly at the ship. What a disappointing fate for the passengers. Adrift in space forever. Ugh, that was not the way he wanted to go out. The idea of being so powerless was terrifying.

"Possibly." Captain Sheridan shrugged, unwilling to speculate. His eyes were fixed upon the ship, no doubt wondering about its history. The man had a fascination with the past.

"That's a hell of a wrong turn to make." Michael snorted. He would have loved to see a pilot try to explain that one to the passengers. 'Um, sorry folks. Looks like were a couple billion light years from were we were trying to get to. Sorry for the delay.'

"Maybe it wasn't a wrong turn." Captain Sheridan shrugged noncommittally.

"Why don't we ask the pilot?" Lieutenant Corwin said in shock.

"There is something alive in there!" Michael damn near shouted. Good god, could the cryogenics systems still be active? He'd heard rumors that theoretically one could be frozen indefinitely but he'd never actually heard of that being put to the test.

"Bring her in." Sheridan nodded to Lieutenant Corwin before tapping his link, "Sheridan to med lab."

"Dr. Franklin speaking."

"We may have a patient for you in docking bay four."

* * *

Zach snorted with amusement at his co-worker's antics. Officer Montgomery was doing his best not to gawk at the imperial dockworkers but failing badly. They were the oddest assortment of people he'd seen in his entire life, including his time on Babylon 5. Dock ten was a constant flow of cyborgs, servitors, swarthy skinned men with thick beards, and eerie floating skulls with glowing red eyes.

"What do you think they want the ostriches for?" Montgomery squinted at trio of the servitors were lazily trying to direct a small crowd of large birds onto one of the eagle shaped transports.

"Eggs?" Zack shrugged, "How the hell should I know? I know less about the imperials than you do."

"You were stationed outside their door, you have to know something." One of the ostriches managed to bolt past the servitor and into the line of swarthy skinned men carrying bags of grain into another transport. The swarthy skinned men screamed and dodged the giant bird, moving out of the way and leaving it to one of the oversized Ogryn to overpower the angry bird.

"I know they are very fond of staying inside their room and not talking with security." Zack watched the battle between man and bird in mild amusement. The infuriated bird was carried one handed by the Ogryn over to a transport and flung in with the other ostriches.

"Come on sir you have to give me something better than that." Montgomery simply refused to believe that escorting the imperials had been as mind numbingly boring as it had been.

"You've been watching too much ISN Montgomery. Nothing happened," Zack shrugged, "I might as well have been guarding the Gelf Ambassador when he's hibernating for all the excitement I got."

He swatted one of the skulls away from the place where it had been hovering in front of his face, jabbering incoherently in the imperial language. It hissed angrily as it sped away from him and back to one of the cyborgs in the red robes.

"Ex…ex… excuse me," stuttered a pretentious voice from behind him. He turned and came face to face with the Inquisitor's translator Jak. Crouched behind him and just barely fitting into the narrow passageway was the small mountain of flesh and sinew known as Galut.

"Oh!" Zack blinked in surprise, "Hey."

"We ne.. need to get to the transports. Please allow us through," Jak smiled politely and looked expectantly at Zack. Zack moved to the side, closer to officer Montgomery allowing the shambling intellectual past. Jak meandered forwards at a brisk hobble, lugging a rucksack full of books and scrolls.

Jak turned round after entering and yelled back up the hallway, barking stuttered orders in the imperial language. He sighed and looked to Zack, "Ogryn are st..strong but take a str…strong hand to command. They for..forget things too easily."

"If you say so," Zack said noncommittally as he stared at the door, watching the Ogryn squeeze through the small door. It wasn't quite wide enough for him, forcing him to get sideways on his hands and knees. It looked a bit as though the door were giving birth to a particularly large and smelly man.

Something was nagging at the back of Zack's mind but whenever he tried to put his finger on it seemed to escape him. He knew it was vitally important but for the life of him he couldn't remember what in the heck it was. Susan… something to do with Susan.

No, he shook his head. Not Susan, there was no reason to think about Susan. But why not? He had just seen her in the Zoccalo on some down time hadn't he? Wait… when had he been in the Zoccalo? No, he must have been there. Never mind, he had more important things to do.

"Officer Allen?" Zack snapped back from his own thoughts abruptly.

"Yes… uh…" He floundered for Jak's title, "I'm not sure what to call you."

"Jak will do officer. I hold no titles nor family names." Jak watched the Ogryn heave a sheer silk bag over his shoulder. Beneath the sheer white fabric the curvaceous form of a woman was just visible, "Be careful with it Ogryn. Don't damage the astropathic servitor."

Zack swallowed and tried not to stare and at supple flesh of the woman. He'd been told about the 'meat puppet' that the Captain of the bounty communicated through but he hadn't expected to see it in person. The imperial standards of modesty apparently varied drastically. He blushed and looked at Officer Montgomery who was staring at the flesh beneath the sheer fabric with wrapped attention.

"Damn it Montgomery!" Zach smacked him, "She's a corpse."

"Quite so," Jak nodded, "Come Galut."

The Orgryn stood in place, staring Zack in the eye and chewing his lip. Zack felt that same nagging itch at the back of his mind. There was something he needed to be doing. He opened his lips to ask but the words died in his throat. What was the question he was going to ask? It couldn't have mattered that much.

"Galut! Now" Jak said firmly, motioning for him to head to one of the nearest transports.

The Ogryn stood stock still, shifting on the balls of his feet. Staring from the sack on his shoulder to Zack with a pleading expression. The large man looked on the verge of tears but seemed too terrified to cry. Zack walked up to him and rested a hand on his arm, "Hey there big guy, what's the matter?"

Jak swore in his native tongue, "C… claustrophobia… how c… could I have forgotten? Ugh… with the added stress of course it would go into overdrive."

"Added stress?" The nagging feeling was slowly turning into a throbbing headache.

"O.. of leaving his new friends of course," Jak said a bit too quickly. There was something off with the entire situation.

"We're glad to have you big guy," Zack smiled politely at the Ogryn, "I know that the Chief and Commander Iva…" Zack trailed off forgetting what he was going to say, "Uh, that is to say we're glad to have you here and sad to see you go."

That was enough to set the Ogryn off into a full-blown bout of crying. Tears the size of golf balls rolled down his cheeks, leaving runs down his face where they wiped away about a weeks worth of sweat and grime. He stood there silently balling, rubbing the stuffed rabbit tied to his side for comfort.

Jak's expression soured and he started yelling in the Imperial language. The Ogryn swallowed, coughed, and started balling again as he followed Jak towards the nearest ship. Officer Montgomery shook his head confusedly, "What in the hell do you think that was about?"

"I haven't got the vaguest idea," Zack shook his head and tried to ignore the nagging tug at the back of his mind, "Probably best not to think about it."

"Yeah, the Empire is freaking weird," Officer Montgomery smiled, "On the bright side now we know their women have all the right parts in all the right places."

"You're a pig Montgomery," Zack chuckled.

"Oink."

* * *

Sørian swore and ducked down another corridor as a third security patrol whipped around the corner. How many damn patrols did the Belzafesters have? It seemed like every damn on duty security officer was on their feet and walking around the so-called 'New Belzafest' ward of the ship. It was also the strip of what was formerly the main drag where the Amon commonly staged meetings.

"Is Phoneutria out of his mind not relocating?" Sørian hissed to himself as he looked down at his chronometer. Twenty minutes to go. Damn it. He could make the meeting but there was no way to avoid the patrols entirely, well better to take the risk than to show up late and end up Hexathelidae's next sacrifice.

Oh the two of them had a 'truce' to be sure, but Sørian didn't trust that truce even half as far as he could throw it. If he showed up late and angered Phoneutria he would be sacrificed to the Prince of Excess just as surely as anyone else who disobeyed the Amon Sui.

He walked at a brusque pace down the sidewalk, doing his best to look like he belonged. Why on earth was there such a powerful security presence in this section of the ship? Never mind, just two blocks to go.

Sørian felt even more naked and out of place among the Belzafesters than he did around any of the other commoners. He couldn't help but fear that he stuck out like a sore thumb in the midst of all these fair skinned foreigners. It was like carrying a sign that said 'look at me I'm foreign.'

It was a blissful relief to reach the door painted with the green fist of Amon that smelled of Almonds and Cinnamon. He pushed the door open and rushed into the room, saying, "For the glory of the hand that grasps I come, for the glory of the hand that holds I come, for the glory of the hand that gives I come, for the glory of the hand I come," as quickly as he could manage while rushing over to his place in the circle.

Hexathelidae watched him run past her in apparent disappointment that he'd remembered to say the password this time, absently rubbing one of her knives lovingly. Sørian ignored the woman and suppressed the pleasant memories of what lay beneath the synthaskin bodysuit she wore. Now wasn't the time for that sort of thinking. He looked at his chronometer, ten seconds to go. Thank the true gods!

He looked up in relief and nearly shouted in shock when he came face to face with the last person he ever expected to see. Nathaniel Emanuelle Sáclair was standing in front of him. It took him a few seconds to realize that Captain Sáclair was neither moving nor breathing, "A damned hologram…"

"A damned _good_ hologram," muttered a surly voice from behind him, "Some of my better work if I do say so myself."

"Dex," Sørian said coldly to the jovial voice behind him, "I was lead to believe you'd perished in the Belzafest attacks."

"Aye," Dex nodded, "That sounds about right then eh' lad. Sept' of course for the fact what I aint' dead. Least ways not yet."

"Do learn to speak properly at some point," Sørian sneered, "It will improve your quality of life greatly."

"Nah, I think I'll keep me language the way it is, thank ye' kindly. Especially seeing has how it pisses off spoiled little shits like you," Dex smiled, "I look forward to the day when we no longer require the services of your kind."

"And when will that be? When techno heretics like you finally have the run of what you want? Doing what you want? Making what you want? It was the likes of you who made the Iron Men who destroyed the first human Empire," Dex's lip curled and he spat on the ground at Sørian's feet before storming away. Dex was an oddity in the Amon Sui partisans. He made no effort to conceal his face or his motivations, it was entirely possible that Dex was the man's actual name.

That Osma hadn't managed to catch the bull headed prig was a sign of the techno pagan's unique skills. Dex was the worst sort of techno heretic traitor that the Adeptus Mechanicus loathed. He sought knowledge for its own sake and distributed complex and often dangerous technical data to everyone he believed would be able to understand it. If the man had his druthers the Empire would be ruled by cold, emotionless, unthinking machines. Disgusting.

"It is unwise to provoke him Latrodectus," hissed a breathy voice to his side. He looked over at the buxom form of Stenatoda. The dead did seem to be more active today than was usual. Phoneutria was up to something big if he was keeping partisan cells out of the loop.

"I hold powers he cannot dream of Stenatoda. The true gods are with me in all I do," he deeply enjoyed how her lip curled in distaste at a reference to the dark patrons. "I have nothing to fear from him."

"That is only because your imagination is limited Sørian. Not because he is less of a predator than you are," Stenatoda shook her head dismissively, stretching the porcelain flesh behind her bodice and veil deliciously. She would make a perfect sacrifice to the Thirsting Prince someday. She had the perfect throaty voice for the screams necessary to get that particular demon prince's attention.

Sørian bowed insincerely, "Those with power do not require imagination, only opportunity. Now best not to keep the patron waiting." He gestured to the wide circle of partisans, dismissing her entirely. The furious Stenatoda strode away, giving Sørian ample time to examine the curve of her hips as she went.

"I do not like this Latrodectus," hissed the smoky voice Hexathelidae as she wrapped her body around his from behind. Lithe hands rested indecently on his person, rubbing and tweaking at his flesh. She really was quite pleasant when she wasn't trying to gut him like a fish.

"Nor I Hexathelidae," Sørian said as he looked around at the room, "Nor do I."

The circle was larger than was customary. It was rare for more than ten partisans to meet at once, the risk that a single cell might be discovered by ship's security was too great to hazard a large gathering. But there were not less than forty partisans and a good three score bodyguards packed into the modest dwelling.

"Something momentous is going to happen soon, though why Phoneutria is risking us all in one place is beyond me," Sørian bit his lip stop from moaning. He grabbed Hexathelida's hand and twisted it painfully, dislocating her thumb, "Now is not the time for that."

Hexathelida bit his ear hard enough to draw blood and smiled at him. Her eyes clouded with lust and she gurgled in delight as she popped her bone back into place. Damnit, he'd forgotten that the woman had no pain receptors, only pleasure. Insufferable death cultist.

"Later woman," he hissed, "Later."

Hexithelida caressed her hips and knives, staring at him with murder in her eyes. Sørian turned his back on her, half expecting a sacrificial knife to wedge itself in his spine. Luckily it did not. Hexithelida took her place in the circle next to him, panting slightly with exertion and anticipation.

The room echoed with a booming gong and the center of the room flickered into life. The translucent blue holographic image of Phoneutria glared at everyone and no-one. Sørian had never seen him this angry. The sorcerer smiled, his patron would no doubt have a new sacrifice this day. He exchanged a glance with Hexithelida, her eyes were wild with anticipation.

"I am disappointed beyond words at the rampant incompetence displayed by the members of our organization responsible for launching an attack on the shield generators while we are in the middle of hostile territory," Phoneutria's eyes quivered with rage, "Our purpose is to conquer the _Endless Bounty_ not get it blown up by some gun happy backwater outpost with an over-inflated sense of jingoistic pride."

A nobleman wearing a feathered frock flinched as Phoneutria's hologram jabbed a glowing finger toward's the flaring nostril's of his stylized porcelain mask, "If we _blow up the ship_ then this was all for nothing. None of this entire damned process matters."

An opulently dressed merchant wearing a hawklike mask covered with opals burst into tears under Phoneutria's withering gaze, "This is not Imperial space. There is no Amon naval presence to commandeer the bounty _after _we've disabled the shields. Simply because you've been told that a plan is put in place does not mean that I am ordering you to put it into action the second the whim hits you. For the sake of the Amon _think_ before you act! If I haven't ordered you to launch an attack it's not because I don't realize you can do so. It is because I do not _want_ you to do so."

Phoneutria's image hissed and sparked as he started to pace at a speed slightly faster than the holographic projector could keep up with. Vague disappointed looking after-images of himself bloomed in the space behind him. The ethereal specters of his rage contorted and vanished ominously.

"We cannot afford these mistakes! The pretender Sáclair is in a weakened position. Soon he will fall. This I can promise you faithful brothers of the Amon," Phoneutria's eyes narrowed and he glared at Sørian, "That I will meet out punishment to those responsible. Ambition has its limits and loyalty to the Amon is more important than whatever other oaths you may have to keep. It would be wise not to make promises that force you to come into conflict with our glorious purpose."

It took a few moments for Sørian's brain to process what Phoneutria was implying. By the Gods! Phoneutria thought that _he_ was the architect of the failed assault on the _Endless Bounty._ Sørian's blood ran cold. God's blood, he had no way of proving that he wasn't the architect. He couldn't exactly claim he wasn't guilty of betraying Phoneutria's plans for the _Endless Bounty_. He'd gone through a great deal of effort to conceal his movements too and from the ship, but not his absence from his quarters.

A life of heresy and betrayal and his death would most likely be the product of a case of mistaken identity. He would have found it funny were he not intimately aware that he might be torn to pieces at any moment. If it came to a fight he would lose, his own talents in the true craft were limited. Without summoning circles or totems he was hard pressed to create more than a couple bursts of fire before his reserves of psychic energy became depleted. He was a trained summoner, not a battle mage. With his patron deity's weakened hold on this plane of reality he was hardly even that.

He exchanged a worried look with Hexathelida, though it was hard to read her expression behind her mask her posture had tightened and her fingers were gripping her knives, not caressing them. Judging by her aroused panting she seemed to be expecting the chance to stab someone at a moment's notice.

Sørian wondered how quickly she would turn on him when the opportunity came. Probably she'd be the first. Hexathelidia was not the greatest proponent of loyal service.

Phoneutria snapped his fingers and Sørian abruptly came back to reality, "We wait. We bide our time. And we will strike. Whoever brings me the head of the man responsible for this nightmare will be rewarded greatly. I will grant a pardon to those caught in his plans, but if and only if they bring me his head," he glanced ominously arount the room, "Do not presume that I do not already know of your treacheries. I am cleverer than you give me credit for and twice as dangerous. Now _get to it_."

He snarled and clapped his hands, phasing the hologram back into nothingness, leaving the assorted saboteurs together alone in the room. Silence reigned as they Amon Sui partisans stared at each other. A room full of the most capable murders and brigands on the _Endless Bounty__, _all of them wondering who's blood would be spilled. All of them wondering who they might pin the failed conquest of the bounty upon.

All of them, that is, with the exception of Dex. The techopagan was not nervously examining his fellow partisans. No his eyes were fixed unflinchingly upon Sørian, his lips quirked into a half smile, and his eyes were twinkling. There was something about that smile more disturbing than any demon he'd ever summoned.

"This will not end well."

"Us least of all I expect," Hexathelida sighed, "You realize we're the prime suspects of treason and treachery if anyone gets too antsy with their side arm."

"The thought had crossed my mind yes. It would be perhaps wise to beat our retreat sooner rather than later?" Sørian tapped slightly into the power of the fetish he had tied about his neck. Power crackled uncomfortably beneath the flesh of his right hand as he made a hasty retreat towards the only door. Sørian felt a surge of relief that he had nearly been late for the meeting, a few minutes earlier and he would have had to muscle past the sour faced trader and his Ogryn bodyguards.

"Hurry," the voice of Hexathelida was heavy with anticipation as she watched a half dozen masked partisans exchanging accusations, "These morons are going to start a fight here and now."

"I'm trying!" Spat Sørian. He fumbled with the controls to the door, punching in the code to exit once, twice, thrice, "What the hell do you mean unable to comply!"

It clicked in his head, "By the Gods... he can't mean for us to..."

"This is going to be a blood bath," hissed Hexathelida in a mix of lust and fear as she inched towards Sørian.

"Unless I miss my guess that's the point of having such a large meeting," Sørian swore, "He's thinning the herd, at least of those of us he has doubts about. He can't risk letting us become too ambitious or too competent while we're out of the range of the Amon's sphere of influence."

"Duck!" Hexathelida screeched and dropped to the floor, yanking Sørian down with her. A cascade of stubber fire raked the door from some damned fool's hold-out pistol. The Amon Sui meeting place turned into a charnel house as the partisans turned on each other.

"Oh to hell with this!" Sørian fumbled with the pouch at his waist, examining the supplies he had with him. He didn't have his more esoteric supplies with him, the hand of Gak'vo'ketha'lo would have been substantially more difficult to explain than chalk and feathers, but it would be enough, "Hexathelida! We're getting out of here. I need two hearts, a liver, and an ear."

"Into that?" Hexathelida smiled and looked into the bloody melee. She licked her lips and breathed heavily, "I suppose it has been too long since I've properly done my devotions to the thirsting one."

"This is not the time Hexathelida! Two hearts, a liver, and an ear!" Sørian flinched as an axe blade swung through the air, sailing past his ear by inches. He reached into his bag and pulled out a small bone totem of a man inscribed with a cruel angular script, "Unless you have some pressing urge to die _now_ I suggest you get moving."

Hexathelida gutturally screeched and tossed herself into the swirling morass of blades and bullets. Her grimalkin form stretched and swayed rhythmically as she dodged and parried the oversized combat knife carried by a musclebound ogryn.

Sørian grabbed a sliver of chalk out of his bag and started to inscribe blasphemous symbols upon the door. A summoning circle was a dangerous thing, a single rune put out of place or glyph misspelled could result in disaster. It required hours, or even days, of careful planning to do properly. However if one's actual goal was to cause an explosion it could be safely achieved in minutes.

"Heretic!" bellowed a furious voice to his left. An aging man with a greying beard was advancing on him with a cruel looking truncheon, "I don't care if you were responsible for this nightmare, I will still gladly see you dead."

Sørian rolled his eyes, grabbed the bone totem and broke it in half. The old man fell to the ground, dead, "I don't have time for this!" Sørian looked at his circle, the 'ang' rune looked like a 'gelf' but that was probably in his favor this time.

"A pistol Sørian," he shouted to himself as he rooted through his bag for the vial of essence of Tanshir Willow, "Next time bring a pistol to the bloody meeting!"

He looked to the melee, looking for Hexathelida. His brain went white with anger, the damned fool of a cultist had fallen into a blood rage and entirely forgotten about her role in collecting components, "Must I do _everything_ myself?"

Pulling a jagged knife out of his coat, Sørian crawled to the old man. The floor was slick with the blood of the dead and dying. The blood, there was too much blood. Sørian turned in and looked to the door, realizing his mistake too late to change anything. The entire room was one giant charnel house, the poorly made summoning circle wouldn't differentiate between sacrificial murders and general fighting. All it would take is a single drop of blood shed in the battle and the circle would implode.

"By the gods! Hexathelida, grab onto something," Sørian ran to the wall and grabbed the bulkhead as tightly as he could, waiting for an explosion that never came.

Silence descended upon the room as the Amon Sui partisans all came to a halt. He didn't need to look behind himself to recognize the wailing howl behind him. The circle was open and a door to the warp ripped open. A deep birdlike wail echoed from inside the portal as a long skeletal arm reached out from the void and clasped the deck. Steel tore under razor sharp talons.

"No, no, no, no!" It was only supposed to explode, not actually open a warp portal. The ship's hexagrammic wards were ostensibly too strong for that to happen. Another impossible thing happening with his summoning circles in the space of a month. It must be a new record.

The talon tipped hand reached out and swatted around as the demon struggled to enlarge the hole. An unluck partisan caught a viscous backhanded swat that split his head like a mellon. The partisans opened fire on the hand, their murderous intentions briefly forgotten.

Sørian turned and came face to face with the impassive visage of Dex, still wearing that insufferable smile. Sorian grabbed for the front of Dex's shirt with every intention of tossing the bastard to appease the demon, but his hands just passed through Dex's chest the hologram disappeared.

"Cowardly bastard!" Swore Sørian. The sonofabitch had probably disappeared at the same time as Phoneutria. Which meant that the locked door behind the portal wasn't the only door. There had to be another exit.

Sørian felt along the wall till his hand found a recessed part, hidden by a hologram. He pressed a button and felt a cool rush of air from the passageway beyond. Sørian exhaled with relief as he ducked down the passageway and gladly lapped at the tepid air. He opened his eyes and realized that he was staring into a timer. A timer slowly declining to zero.

"Techno-pagan bastard," Sørian ran as fast as his legs would allow, his legs strengthened by the talismanic energies of his fetish. Two minutes, only two minutes till it exploded, only two minutes for him to get to safety, it would be enough.

Sørian ran, jumped, ducked, and leapt his way down the dark tunnel, unsure where it went but unwilling to risk stopping long enough to check the maps along the walls. Just as he felt his lungs were about to burst from exertion a hot blast of air rocked up the corridor. The concussive force knocked him off his feet and flung him off of the causeway.

Sørian fell three stories and crashed bone-crushingly into a large pile of refuse, his arm twisting up the wrong way. Sørian cursed the very souls of Dex and Phoneutria as he plucked spoiled vegetables from his face and hair. The bastards had been working together, Dex had to have known about that passageway in advance from Phoneutira in order to set up the bomb.

Fine then, if that's the way they wanted it Sørian could handle that. Loyalty begets loyalty, treachery begets ambition as his mentor used to say. It was time for Sørian to get ambitious.

* * *

The bulkhead of the ancient ship was thicker than the standard modern ship. Without the advanced ship building technologies of he modern era, pre-hyperspace ships had been forced to rely on thick hulls to protect them from dangerous space debris. It took nearly an hour to cut through the two feet of solid steel.

When the bulkhead eventually gave way it popped outward with a puckering squelch of changing pressure and crashed deafeningly against the deck plates. Michael and his security contingent stood at the ready, warily staring into the darkness.

"Are you sure the added precautions are necessary sir?" Dr. Franklin asked John, "We only detected a single humanoid life-form."

"They're perhaps excessive Mr. Garibaldi, but I prefer to be cautious. Something the Imperial Inquisitor said has me a bit spooked about this ship," Captain Sheridan eyed the sleeper ship apprehensively, his omnipresent grin dulled somewhat with worry.

"The guy gives me the creeps sir," Michael hadn't cared much for the Inquisitor, even before he knew the man's official title, "I'm especially uncomfortable with his request to have Dorn returned to him." Michael motioned for his security team to pile into the ship. The small contingent of men hopped into the ship, guns at the ready.

"I don't know if we legally have the right not to return him. He is an imperial citizen," Captain Sheridan said halfheartedly, the words hollow on his lips, "Members of the non-aligned worlds have the right to request that trials be conducted by their own legal system. But I suppose that's only if Dorn request it."

"In this case it would be convicted without trial,"Dr. Franklin's had his medical sensor grasped in a death grip at the thought of the Imperial plan for Dorn, "They've made it abundantly clear they simply intend to lobotomize him or, barring that, desecrate his body."

"I'm with the Doc on this one sir," Michael nodded to officer Daniels acknowledging the all clear and motioning for the Captain to follow.

Captain Sheridan scratched the back of his head and entered the ship, "I've send a message to Senator Hidoshi but I don't know what we can do about it in the meantime other than stall."

Michael grunted noncommittally as he entered the pitch black of the ship and squinted trying to make out shapes in the distance. The blindingly bright lights attached to the security officer's guns illuminated random bits of the ship as they searched the corners to re-verify the ship's security. It was dark, damp and more than a bit spooky.

"Not exactly a vacation spot," muttered John as he eyed the ship's architecture with wrapped attention, "Amazing what we were able to do with so little."

"Sir," Officer Burton walked up to Michael and gave a hasty salute, "We searched the ship. There are two cryogenic freezing tubes. The one on the left is a corpse, the one on the right seems to have kept containment, but I can't say for sure."

"I've got life signs on this one right here," Dr. Franklin shouted excitedly. His medical sensor flashed ominously, "her signal is weakening."

"Opening the ship must have triggered something," Captain Sheridan's eyes widened in alarm and regret. If she died the Captain might not forgive himself. He wouldn't be able to bear the idea that his curiosity could be her undoing.

"We're going to have to get her back to med lab or we'll lose her." Dr. Franklin tapped his link and waved at the security team, "What are you waiting for? Get a gurney!"

* * *

It should have been obvious to him that his mistress' pride had been wounded by Mr. Garibaldi's dismissial of her but it honestly hadn't occurred to him that the Magos had pride to wound. She'd always seemed somehow serene and beyond such paltry hauteur. Magos Frist was in a petulant mood. Everyone knew that Magos frist was in a petulant mood. Everyone knew that it was unwise to mention the Magos' mood to her. Everyone, that is, except Abbas. Foolishly Abbas had made the error of asking her, "What's wrong mistress?"

It had been a mistake.

Magos Frist flew into a rage, ranting about how an apprentice was to listen and obey without question, about how he should not expect special treatment because of his birth, and about how there was no space in her service for such useless drivel as gossip. Abbas was close to tears by the time she finished and greatly feared that she might hit him.

Blessedly Tuul had interceded before she'd actually hit him, claiming that it was time for Abbas' training and indoctrination that day. Abbas could have kissed him. The two of them walked away from the raging Magos, not daring to speak till they'd passed through the ring of cherubs and skulls that was always flying around her.

"I don't get it," Abbas twisted and dislodged himself from Tuuls grip, "What is wrong?"

"With the Magos? Not much more than wounded pride. Give her a project to work on and she'll be right as rain in moments," Tuul barked out a metallic cough of a laugh, "You forgot she was a woman didn't you?"

Abbas protested indignantly stamping his foot, "I did no such thing."

"Tell me boy," Tuul said his optics focusing on Abbas' face, "Are you ignorant of women entirely?"

"I have many sisters," Abbas said defensively, "I know how to deal with women."

"You could have fooled me boy," Tuul playfully ruffled Abbas' hair with a mechandrite as he locked the boy into a headlock, "What's wrong? Honestly? I mean child that is the first mistake any man learns to avoid."

"I...I..." Abbas sighed, "I guess I did forget."

"There's no shame in that boy. I forget sometimes myself. Half the time I forget I'm a man for that matter. As you become more and more machine it matters less and less," he tapped the side of his head knowingly, "But much as I try to be more machine than flesh every once and a while the flesh gets in the way. It's up to us to aspire for more, but there's only so far we can go."

"I understand," Abbas smiled, "So we never really lose what makes us who we are."

"Well, not for centuries anyway," Tuul shrugged, "If you live long enough you will reach a point where all that matters is pure logic, but that isn't something to worry about for a long, long time," he cracked his neck and gestured to an open door with one of his mechandrites, "Now let us get on with your duties."

Abbas stared at the curious machine in front of them. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before in his life, a strange mix of alien looking bits and bobs two stories tall, "Magos adept Tuul... what in the name of the Empe... Omnissiah is that?" Abbas floundered remembering his new devotions.

"That is a hyperdrive generator that we... liberated from the wreckage of the Minbari cruiser. It has taken weeks to for the Inquisitor to acquire sufficient parts for us to make it function... in theory at least," Tuul laughed at Abbas' confused expression, "Of course, forgive me. I've been working on this damned thing for so long that I forget that not everyone knows what I'm talking about. Hyperspace is how the Alliance travels faster than the speed of light, how they travel faster than the speed of light without entering the warp."

Abbas' heart was beating fit to burst. _Without _entering the warp? Was such a thing possible? He had heard tales of such magical devices of course. People told tales of such devices from the dark age of technology when mankind could shape the stars and reform planets at will. But to have such a device within inches of him was just too much.

"Yes Abbas," Tuul continued, "It is truly what you think it is. And I intend to spend the rest of your apprenticeship training you about these sorts of machines and how to construct them. Can you imagine it? Travel without fear of the warp. By the Omnissiah, we could recolonize space no matter the dangers of the warp."

He ruffled Abbas' hair again, "Now come on then child. Let's get to it. You have a lot to learn."

* * *

She was pretty. Stephen couldn't help but feel somewhat transfixed by her beauty. It was a bit too much like a fairy tale for his taste, the beautiful princess put to sleep for a hundred years only to wake up and still be dying. Well dying wasn't a good end for a fairy tale. It was time for the good doctor to heal her so she could live happily ever after.

She was doing everything in her power to make that difficult. It wasn't her fault. Cryogenic tubes were _not_ intended to last for hundreds of years at a time without maintenance. The few cases of long term cryogenic resuscitation done successfully had been from facilities with regular care and update of the tubes.

This wasn't just less than ideal. This was the nightmare situation. Not only was he trying to revive the woman from a hundred year cryogenic coma he had the added bonus of not having a scrap of the woman's medical history. If he made even one mistake, gave her a single medicine she had an allergic from taking and she would die then and there.

Her death was not an acceptable outcome.

The nurse at his side grabbed the woman's wrist as she was loaded into the elevator, "I'm losing her pulse, threading. She's gone into arrest."

"50cc of demolara," muttered Dr. Franklin absently as he injected the drug. Several pregnant moments passed.

"Still flatlining," another nurse pulled out a medical scanner and waved it over the woman.

"Cardiac stimulators," said the first nurse as she pulled out the metal paddles. Pressing them to the woman's chest and looking to Stephen for permission.

Stephen didn't even hesitate before saying, "hit her."

The woman's body jumped with the jolt of electricity as her muscles responded to the unexpected stimulus. However it wasn't enough, "Nothing"

Stephen bit his lip, "Hit her again."

The body jumped again. The heart beeped faintly for a few seconds on the monitor before going back into cardiac arrest.

She would not die. Stephen wouldn't _allow_ her to die.

* * *

Susan had no idea how long she'd been unconscious when she awoke. Long enough to load her onto one of the Imperial transports apparently. She was crowded into a small cargo compartment with the Inquisitor's belongings, Jak, the Imperial doctor, and the Imperial who'd recently recovered from his wounds at Dorn's hands. She'd been roused by a loud argument between the three of them.

"Because we're damn well kidnapping a foreign military official that's why," shouted a scratchy voice just outside of Susan's admittedly limited field of vision. Between the drugs, the black veil and the sheer fabric of the sack she was inside of, "By the Throne, has the Inquisitor gone senile?"

"Danzig you know f...full well that the Inquisitor never does anything without having a reason for doing s...so." Stuttered the diminutive Jak, "In th..this case he f...felt it was unwise to leave a psycher who'd been inside his mind with the Alliance. N...no telling what secrets she got."

"Ah," Danzig's voice relaxed considerably, "That makes a great deal more sense. If its a bolt magnet I see why we brought it with us."

"She," Susan slurred out, "Not 'it' I'm a 'she'."

"A not unimpressive she judging by what I can see," at that grunted a sandy haired man from standing behind Danzig. The bastard Doctor Gazan, "Gentlemen we have taken the woman from her home, might I request that we preserve what is left of her modesty?"

Danzig clucked his tongue, "Shameful that it was necessary to do this. Please forgive us for the offenses we are about to commit."

Susan responded with a string of the most creative phrases she could think of in Russian. Danzig quirked his eyebrow and looked at Jak. The fidgety man shook his head uncomprehendingly, "I'm unsure of that language... it vaguely resembles Vostroyan or Valhallan but I couldn't understand it's meaning. I doubt it was particularly congratulatory."

"I could have told you that," Gazan stated dryly, "Very well then. Miss Ivanova, yes? That was your name correct? Very well miss Ivanova we are going to take you out of the sack and get you into some proper clothes. It will hurt _very_ badly but if I am going to get your wounds properly dressed and splinted we must do it. I know that even now you are planning your escape. I request that you wait for me to finish. If you are going to try to go out in a blaze of glory it is customary to do so whilst clothed."

Susan blushed as she realized her own nakedness. She tried to move her arms to cover her front but they only flopped painfully where they were broken. Much as she would have liked to gut the lot of them it seemed that, for the moment at least, she was their prisoner, "Very well."

"This goes without saying but if we even suspect you of trying to commit psychic witchcraft upon my person or that of anyone on this transport we will fill you full of so many holes they'll have to identify you from your blood records," Gazan said as he opened the sack and pulled the veil from her eyes. He said the threat in the same paternal tones Susan might have associated with her own parents offering sweets. In his own twisted way Gazan seemed to believe this was being kind to her.

For all their bluster and bravado Gazan and Danzig were both clearly unaccustomed to being this close to a naked woman. The dark skinned men blushed and hesitated as they helped her dress, trying to stare everywhere but at her, lengthening the agonizing process of helping her dress. After a couple painful fumbling moments they manage to have her fully clothed in a simple woolen garb bearing an embroidered sigil in its center.

"Much better," Gazan nodded approvingly, "Now for the hard part. I'm going to have to set the bones."

Jak sniffed, "T... the Inquisitor hasn't approved that."

"He hasn't approved me shooting you in the head either but if it comes down to it I'm going to that without asking as well. I will not willingly allow a person to go on being injured for no damn reason," Gazan blithely said as he started to pull support splints he'd clearly borrowed from the Babylon Five medical supplies. He smiled apologetically, "Your Dr. Franklin was more than generous in supplying me with certain medical supplies we were running low on. I am ashamed that they will be put to this purpose but I suspect he would be glad I did what I could to put you back on the path to wellness."

"After breaking my bones in the first place," Susan said icily. She eyed Gazan's side arm longingly.

Gazan followed her gaze and tutted, "Not yet miss Ivanova. Soon perhaps, but not now." He grasped her leg and yanked it into place. Susan swore as the sensation hit her abruptly. "God dammit!"

"We're going to have to teach this girl to swear properly," Danzig rubbed the stiffness out of his wrists, "If she starts blaspheming like that she's likely to get killed for being a heretic."

"T... technically she is a heretic," Jak interjected, "Well... a p...pagan."

"Jak. Your lips are moving and sound is coming out," Danzig said scathingly, "You should see to that."

"Well I n...never!" Jak stood and stormed out of the cargo hold, clearly trying to look dramatic. His natural tics rather ruined the dramatic suspense of the moment.

The door slammed behind him and Gazan smacked Danzig in the chest, causing the younger man to yelp in pain, "That bloody well hurt!"

"Good," the doctor grabbed Susan's arm and examined where he'd broken it, "It was supposed to. Jak is an insufferable pain with little sympathy for others but he's only doing his job."

"Demeaning the woman?"

"Providing an honest assessment of the situation. He's an ass but he usually has his facts straight. He can't help that providing us with fact comes out as rude gibberish," Gazan twisted the arm, then twisted it back because he didn't like the way it was bending. Susan screamed out in pain again and spat in Gazan's face.

"That was not necessary young lady," Gazan wiped his face with a handkerchief as he clamped the splint into place, "Now sit back and let me get back to doing what I need to do."

"And then what? Am I the Inquisitor's servant? His prisoner? His slave?" Susan felt the blissful nothingness of the drugs fading away and being replaced with red hot fury. She was not some damned damsel in distress to be rescued and she wasn't about to be a compliant hostage. She was damn well going to fight every second they had her.

"I cannot even begin to guess as to the Inquisitor's plans for you madam," Danzig helped Gazan dress the wound on Susan's leg before shoving the bone back into place, "But I doubt he wants you for anything untoward if that's what you're implying."

"It took us the better part of three months to realize he wasn't sly," snorted Gazan, "Honestly how was I supposed to know he was actually watching the boys _training_? I spent three damn months secretly watching him to make sure he didn't try anything with the new blood before I realized it was a wasted effort."

Danzig snorted, "I'd forgotten about that."

"Hey! Can we focus please? You're twisting broken bones back into place remember? Kidnapped woman in front of you," The casual way in which these two were treating the kidnapping was rather disturbing. They had absolutely no fear of being caught what so ever.

Danzig eyed the pile of sheer fabric they'd stripped off of Susan, "What happened to the Astropathic Servitor anyway? I never got a clear answer out of Galut before we left the station."

"Damned if I know," Gazan rooted around in his bag and pulled out the most wonderful thing Susan had seen in weeks, an ostrodermic regenerator. Her broken bones would heal in a matter of hours rather than weeks. It was likely that it too had been donated by Dr. Franklin. She was so glad to see it that she briefly forgot she was angry with Gazan for breaking her bones in the first place. Gazan continued to talk as he prodded her broken bones with the device, "For what I could glean from Vira'capac he found the scent of it in the carrion eaters wards but never actually found it. He recons something ate it."

"Disgusting," Danzig's face twisted in distaste, "Why the Alliance allows such creatures is beyond me."

"I don't remember being kidnapped by the pak'ma'ra," Susan found herself feeling a great deal of positive sentiment for the tentacle faced carrion eaters she'd never really nurtured before. However when compared with the Imperials her relationship with the pak'ma'ra had been idillic.

"You'll learn your mistakes soon enough," Danzig nodded sure of himself, "The Inquisitor will see that you get a proper education. Of that I'm sure."

"The Inquisitor can kiss my ass," Susan said bluntly, "And so can you, your damn ship, your captain and your damned Emperor."

Danzig slapped her so hard it nearly dislocated her jaw. He fixed her with a stony stare and spoke in a voice of dangerous calm, "I'm sorry that I needed to do that. You are unaware of the sin you just committed by insulting His name. You need to know now before you anger the wrong noble. Blaspheming is a capitol offense in the Empire, an often enforced one. You will learn to hold your tongue or someone will gladly cut it out for you."

"I'm not afraid of you," Susan twisted her head and clicked her jaw from side to side. It popped back into place with a wet snap.

"Nor should you be," Danzig nodded, "But I am not the one you need fear. Ivanova you are a captive. If you do not start acting like one soon we will be obligated to remind you of your place. You do _not_ wish for the Inquisitor to remind you of your place."

"What has Hilder done to keep you all in such fear of him?" Susan pleaded, "What can he possibly do to you that engenders this sort of fear and loyalty."

"The Inquisitor?" Danzig laughed dryly, "In the time I've known him he's been simplemindedly devoted to a single cause. In the past month alone the pursuit of that goal has destroyed a planet, by _accident. _And yet he still survives, and we with him."

Danzig stood up from where he'd been squatting on the floor next to her and brushed off his silk pants, "No Ivanova the question is not why do we trust and fear the Inquisitor, it's how do we aid him better in his quest. For there can be no more noble task than serving the Emperor's will."

"Gazan, I will leave you to your medicines," He nodded to Susan and walked out of the room, "I will see you later miss Ivanova."

Susan bit back furious tears as Gazan regrew her broken bones, wishing that Danzig would come back and talk to her so she didn't feel so alone and hating herself for being so weak as to need people around her to distract her. She was an officer of the Earth Alliance dammit. Cowboy up and move forward, she couldn't afford weakness.

It didn't make her feel less alone when she repeated that mantra to herself, but it helped her pretend.

* * *

Checking the cells was therapeutic for Michael. Whenever he felt the urge to drink he would just get up and wander the rows of holding cells, checking on the inmates. It kept him busy and reminded him of why he'd given it up, why he kept himself lucid and capable. It was nice to see the good he'd helped do.

Plus it helped to be aware of what was going on in the cells. There was invariably some thing or another going pear shaped and it helped to be in the loop. About half way down the row of cells, in 3-B the door was wide open and Officer Shiro was standing with his arms crossed, looking into the cell with a worried expression on his face.

Garibaldi walked over to the holding cell at a brisk trot. Within the confines of the cell were the two lurkers he'd arrested earlier in the day in the Baazar. They one sleeping on the bed was twisting fitfully in his sleep and screaming, "Incoming" at random moments, his face fearful and his arms clutched to his chest, grasping at himself trying to make himself smaller.

"Damn it" Michael swore to himself. He'd been hoping that the lurker's friend, the imperial priest, would be able to calm him down. Al'Ashir had been kneeling next to the lurker, praying and singing soothing songs to him since the two of them had been put into the cell. The poor guy barely spoke a word of English but he'd been doing everything to comfort his friend.

"How long has he been like that?" Shiro shook his head disapprovingly, starting at the lurker with disgust.

"A couple hours now." Michael sighed. If they didn't get him calmed down soon they would need to have a doctor come and check on him. It wasn't healthy.

"To the walls, get to the walls." The lurker grasped at his blankets and tried to shield himself from his nightmare.

"Damn lurkers," Shiro scoffed "We ought to space all of them."

Garibaldi leaned in close to Shiro and whispered, "Were you in the war?"

"No I missed it." Shiro said in a tone that implied he would gladly have been part. The poor bastard actually believed it too.

"He didn't." Michael flinched as the lurker cried out in terror.

Shiro looked at the lurker in astonishment, "How do you know?"

Michael sighed, "I've had that same dream."

The priest looked up at Garibaldi and smiled, interlocking his thumbs and making a symbol Garibaldi recognized all too well. Ugh, the last thing he wanted was to deal with the Inquisitor today. How in the hell did an Imperial priest end up hanging out with a Lurker?

Michael double tapped his link, "Captain Sheridan, get down the Inquisitor down to the brig. There's something he should see."

Surgery had gone about as well as Michael could hope for. The woman's heart restarted upon being directly hit with a class E cardiac stimulator and she had been necessitated without apparent brain damage, though only time would tell on that. In fact other than the fact that she was having fitful dreams she was in perfectly good health considering the circumstances.

It had not been an easy surgery. Twice she'd nearly died on him, it had taken every trick in his bag to bring her back from the brink. Even now he was reluctant to take her off life support for fear she might fall victim to her inherent cryogenic frailty.

Stephen returned from his rounds find nurse Anderson standing over her with a cranial scanner and a worried expression. The woman flailed and shifted furiously in her sleep.

"When did it start?" Stephen took the cranial scanner, worried that he'd missed something.

"Moments ago. Looks like a dream." Nurse Anderson brushed the woman's hair from her face.

"Or a nightmare," Stephen said looking at the levels of adrenaline in her body. If he didn't know better he'd think someone had hit this woman with an injection of epinephrine.

The woman shot up in bed thrashing and trying to escape whatever it was pursuing her in the dream. Stephen reached down and grabbed her hand firmly. He cooed softy and rubbed her hands soothingly, "It's alright. I'm a Doctor. Do you understand?"

The woman nodded curtly, clearly still scared. She seemed somewhat unconvinced she was even alive, let alone safe and in a hospital. Stephen held her hand, giving her a tangible connection to the real world.

"There's nothing to be afraid of. I'll take care of you." Stephen smiled brightly. She was safe and alive, now for the hard part.

* * *

Daul's room seemed naked without all his personal effects. They'd only been on the station for a few weeks and it was already feeling strange to be leaving it. Which, more than anything else, was a clear sign that it was time to go. The Babylon Station was a gilded cage of heresy designed to make forming relationships with dangerous and vile xenobreeds. The longer he stayed the more intertwined he would become with the local politics.

"Not me, clean the room. Not me!" Daul chided one of the small army of servo skulls tasked with sanitizing the apartment. He batted the hovering skull away from his face as it tired to spray him in the eyes with disinfectant. It bounced off the wall and hissed furiously as it sped for the relative safety of the bedroom. Daul wiped the stream of soapy water from his hand onto the arm of the sofa, "Cairn when I said program them to search for my DNA and render it inert I intended for you to wait till after it was detached from my person."

The cybernetic attaché looked up from frosting a plate of biscuits with as close to a cheeky expression as the mute could manage. He twittered to the hovering skulls and nodded in the affirmative to the Inquisitor.

As Daul watched the Skitarii walk the plate of frosted pastries over to the table he got the distinct impression that Cairn had played a prank on him. The blasted tin man was getting a bit to impudent for his tastes. He grabbed a biscuit and chewed it sullenly as he watched the skulls go about their work.

By the day's end they would have all the supplies they needed to begin the search for Faust anew. The distraction of the Babylon Station would finally come to an end. Securing safe passage through the various xenos territories had been well worth the concession of joining the League of Non-Aligned worlds. While he only trusted the treaty as far as he could spit, it seemed that the xenos in local space had a great deal of reverence for it and were unlikely to violate it without cause.

Throne what was wrong with him? Trusting xenos? Had he lost his mind?

For that matter why had he allowed Vira'capac free reign on the station? Nothing good came from allowing the xenos to be left to their own devices. Then again nothing good came from keeping them under heel either.

Nothing he seemed to do lately conformed with the rigid tenants of behavior he'd been trained in by Inquisitor Gaal. It was positively infuriating. Every decision he made seemed to be just a step further towards being declared an excommunicate traitor. His excuse of gathering intel for a crusade fleet in the future was starting to seem flimsy, even to him.

Zorn Calven sent a messenger scroll only that morning informing him that the Navigators had been able to quell his suspicions. How the man managed to sound just as condescending by proxy was nothing short of miraculous. The stars of the local system didn't even remotely conform with known space. There were several hundred billion too many stars in the wrong places for it to even possibly part of Terran space, even the marked zones of theoretical extragalactic expansion.

He was still skeptical of the Alliance claim that they were natives of the Terra of this sector. It was not impossible that genetically compatible humans evolved on another planet, however it seemed infinitely more likely that a planet with a vaguely humanoid population had been colonized at some point and the colonists had either mated with or destroyed the native humanoids. There were numerous examples of it, the ratlings and Ogryn being the most prominent.

And really, the Alliance honestly expected him to believe that two separate groups of identical bipedal humanoids originated on a planet they named Terra and did not have similar origins? Daul was no fool. At the moment however it was more politically expedient to continue to allow them to believe what they wished. As time progressed it would be

"Tell me Cairn. When did I become responsible for entertaining xenos diplomats? There was a time where I would skewer a man for even suggesting that we allow xenos to surrender. Now I'm greeting a xenos diplomat with tea and biscuits," he picked up a biscuit and stared at it morosely. The frosted Aquilla stared at him judgmentally till he bit off the heads. The flaky pastry dissolved in his mouth in a sweet mess of crumbs and frosting.

Cairn swooped over with a cloth and assaulted his crumb covered beard. Daul batted him away, "Honestly what has gotten into you?"

Cairn crossed his arms and leaned back on his mechandrites, pointing in the direction of the empty liquor bottles lined up across the sink. The Skitarii had poured out every drop of liquor in the apartment after Daul had stopped disciplining the Ogryn. It was a bit like dealing with Inquisitor Gaal's wife, his foster mother, the first time she'd caught him drinking liquor. Cairn glared at him and he heard her voice saying, "You act like a child and I will treat you like a child."

"Enough Skitarii Thross! Your point is taken. My alcohol consumption was ill advised. We've had to kidnap a woman and wipe the minds of a dozen xenos and humans. We're skating on thin ice. I'm bloody well aware of it," Daul bit off a wing and chewed the buttery pastry. He raised the remaining wing and brandished the pastry at Cairn, "And the Ogryn as well, don't think I've forgotten I mistreated him. Poor fool, I don't know what came over me. It was like I was a different person for a minute."

Cairn massaged his temples in frustration, a gesture he'd picked up from watching Mr. Garibaldi. Daul hoped the Skitarii would grow bored of it soon. Cairn hadn't quite mastered it, he mostly just rumpled his hood while appearing to be in pain. It had been too long since Cairn had needed to express emotions of exasperation and he seemed to have forgotten the firmer points of the expression.

"Do try to keep your emotions in check when the Ambassador is here." Daul sighed and swallowed the rest of his biscuit. Cairn twisted his optics indignantly and busied himself with the kettle.

The door chimed and Daul rose to open it, sauntering over to the door and forcing his face to a practiced expression of polite disinterest. The door swung open and the tall mottled orange Narn G'Kar entered his apartment with a smile and a flourish, offering his hand to the Inquisitor, "It is an absolute pleasure to meet you in person Ambassador."

"Inquisitor," Daul corrected as he accepted the Narn's handshake, "Ambassador was a translation error."

"Ah," the Narn frowned somewhat off-put by the poor start, "I apologize. I was unaware."

"Don't worry," Daul sat down in the largest armchair, "As of yet very few of the Ambassadors are aware of my proper title. I only discovered the translation error recently."

"If I may say your English has improved drastically since you spoke to the League of Non-Aligned worlds. If one didn't know better one would assume that you were feigning ignorance for their benefit," G'Kar accepted the tea cup offered to him by Cairn and sniffed it tentatively, "A confusing move."

Daul snorted with amusement as one of the skulls hovered inches away from the Ambassador's head. G'Kar hissed and bared his teeth at the skull, getting a mouth full of soap for his efforts. Daul pretended not to notice the Ambassador's discomforted spitting as he responded to his question, "My understanding of the Alliance standard language is a relatively recent development. A side effect of defending myself against the Earth Alliance telepath."

"Ah," G'Kar's eyes lit up at the mention of the complications between the Alliance and Empire as he wiped his mouth on the back of his gauntlet, "If I may ask what actually happened? The press release is somewhat unclear."

"You may ask," Daul shook his head, "But I have no intention of exacerbating what is already a tenuous relationship with the Earth Alliance. Suffice it to say certain elements of the Earth Alliance government were educated on the dangers of overzealous ambition."

"And does this _education_ have anything to do with the Earth Alliance fleet that is currently en-route to drag the numerous disabled Earther warships to dry dock," he chuckled politely at Daul's miffed expression, "You cannot fight a battle under my very nose and expect me not to research it Inquisitor."

"No," Daul sighed, "I suspect not. Though I hope we have more productive things to speak of today."

"I do not mean to touch on a delicate subject but I feel it necessary to ask why you have declined my requests to open a dialogue till this point," G'Kar grabbed one of the biscuits shaped like the bounty and bit into it. Crispy flakes of biscuit fell down his front and G'Kar brushed himself off apologizing profusely, "Oh my."

"No worries, Cairn's cooking is delicious but often messy. I suggest eating with the plate beneath your chin to avoid spillage," Daul chuckled as Thross offered a napkin with a mechandrite. G'Kar tentatively accepted the napkin from the mechanical tentacle, "As to why I did not schedule a meeting with you; it has been a busy couple of weeks. Had I not been occupied with an assault on the _Endless Bounty_ we well may have met prior to this. And you are not the last to meet with me. I still decline to meet with the Minbari."

"You have not met with the Minbari?" G'Kar looked up from his biscuit in surprise. What was this absurd fixation these xenos had with catering to the whims of the Minbari and Vorlon governments? He had yet to witness evidence that either were worthy of the reverence they were given, even if the Minbari military record did justify their fear.

"I do not like genocidal monsters as a rule," G'Kar choked on his biscuit, "Are you alright Ambassador G'Kar?"

"I'm sorry Inquisitor," G'Kar slapped his chest to stop the coughing, "Most people would consider that statement... somewhat... hasty."

"The truth often is," Daul shook his head, "I prefer to deal in truth, not politically correct fiction. What is it you want from me Ambassador?"

"Obviously a simple cultural exchange would be good for a start but we are, like all the other governments I suspect, obviously interested in trading with you for military technologies," he tapped a gauntleted finger on his chin, "But if I may speak frankly the most useful thing you can provide me with is yourself."

"I beg your pardon?" Daul scowled across his cup of tea and into G'Kar's red eyes.

"My people no longer have psychics. We did in the ancient days, in the times of G'Quan," G'Kar stopped and smiled bashfully, "The great enemy came and killed the psychics with soldiers of darkness. They were eventually sent away but at a great cost. There are no longer Narn telepaths."

Daul blinked at the absurdity of the conversation. G'Kar was asking him to commit a cardinal heresy, that of artificially creating psychers. They wouldn't even be human psychers. His lip curled in disgust and he shook his head, "I think not... our government has... strict regulations upon the use of psychics. I would be very much interested in this great enemy however."

On the offhand chance this species killed all their psychics to avoid the predations of chaos he would have to remember to mark them as 'potential allies for the Ordos Malleus.'

G'Kar brightened at the suggestion, "Of course. It would be my pleasure." From a bag at his side G'Kar pulled out an aging book. The leather of the cover was taken from the skin of some great scaly beast and covered in gold leaf. The pages were thick and smelled of papyrus.

"This is the book of G'Quan. Copied from his original notes, generation to generation. Each copy must be a perfect imitation of the previous one, every note, every jot, every random dab of the pen. The words in this book are as much the voice of G'Quan those from the prophet's own mouth," G'Kar lovingly flipped through the pages, his every touch full of reverence.

He turned the book around and handed it to Daul, "The great enemy came on ships black as night that screamed with the voice of a thousand dying men. They brought a century of darkness till one day a coalition of the light managed to drive them away."

Daul's hands shook with excitement as he looked at the familiar spidery shape on the page. He forced his heart down from his throat and looked up at G'Kar, "And you've got proof that these soldiers of darkness were here?"

"Oh very much so," G'Kar sighed, "And I have seen proof that they are mustering at the edge of known space in a place of great evil but for all my efforts I have not been able to convince anyone of the imminent danger to us all. My own efforts to collect evidence have been less than fruitful."

"Cairn," Daul turned to his attendant, "Would you be so kind as to pull up the records of the fight over Belzafest. The first battle, before planetfall."

"Belzafest?" G'Kar took a second biscuit and chewed with relish, "These really are magnificent pastries."

"You're more than welcome to take some with you when you leave. They won't keep and I don't plan to say on the station long," Daul accepted the holographic projector from his attendant and placed it on the table, "Belzafest was a planet at the edge of our holdings. An archeological curiosity really. At least it was till a rogue agent of the Inquisition started using it as a staging base for something more insidious," he activated the hololithic image of a giant spidery ship in orbit of the planet, "We encountered two ships reminiscent of the designs indicated in your book of G'Quan."

"This is more than I could have hoped to find!" G'Kar's face lit up like a child at his name day, "And you are willing to testify that these ships are a danger to the known worlds."

"Of course," Daul felt a rush of excitement. The trail had not gone entirely cold after all, "Gladly."

"And can we expect you to provide us with advice on how one might fight the dark ones?" G'Kar posited hopefully.

"I will go a step further than that Ambassador. My government is at open war with the monsters that pilot these ships and the bastard who directs them," Daul stuck his hand out to G'Kar, "My friend if you are willing to aid me in destroying the monsters of Faust you have my aid and my friendship."

G'Kar reached out and gladly grasped his hand. His face was turned up in the most genuine smile Daul had seen in years, "Truly this is an auspicious day. I must confess that I had feared the prejudices of the Centauri might have prevented us from having any sort of relationship between our peoples at all. I regret judging you, your's is a wise and reasonable people."

Daul replied, "I hope to prove that wisdom with actions," even as a dark voice hissed 'heretic' in the corner of his mind, tinny and quiet as an echoing whisper in the night. One more step closer to finding Faust. One more step into heresy.

It was only minor heresy, he reminded himself as he pretended to listen to G'Kar's excited rambling praises. A small heresy to prevent a much greater one. It was all for the good of the Empire after all.

'How often does Faust convince himself of that?' he wondered.

"I'm sorry Ambassador," Daul apologized as he blinked his own confused thoughts away, "I was miles away, what was that again?"

"I was just saying that if we were to approach the Centauri Ambassador and get his support as well we could easily convince the known worlds to launch an attack on the enemy while they are still gathering their forces," he smiled toothily, flashing a mouth full of sharp yellow fangs.

"Yes," Daul smiled and nodded approvingly, "Best to get this over with quickly. Best to be done with it."

"Imagine Inquisitor! We could end the enemy here and now."

"No Ambassador. We would only end the enemy for a while. There is always a new enemy. We are never at a loss for new enemies," Daul sighed.

"A man with enough friends need not fear his enemies." Chortled the xenos.

"No ambassador," Daul shook his head, "A man with enough enemies cannot afford to trust his friends."

Cairn walked over and passed a message to Daul. He looked over it blinking in abject astonishment. How in the blazes had Al'Ashir gotten himself arrested? How had he gotten on the Babylon station at all for that matter? Daul swore it Metzik, "I'm sorry Ambassador but if we're going to continue this meeting we'll have to do so on the move. Our ship's brother confessor got it in his head that going and getting himself arrested by Mr. Garibaldi was a wise course of action."

"No time like the present," G'Kar slapped his knees jovially, "Off we go Inquisitor. It took me this long to find someone with proof of what is coming. I don't plan to let you out of my sight till you've managed to warn the council of the coming danger."

Daul looked exasperatedly to Cairn and switched back to gothic, "Well come on then Cairn. We can pick up the Ogryn on the way."

"Of course," G'Kar hesitated, "I don't suppose we could... perhaps..."

Daul rolled his eyes, "Cairn wrap up the biscuits for the Ambassador, we'll have them on the go.

* * *

Osma stared at the boy. The boy stared at Osma.

He was little more than a wisp of a boy, the sort of street child that often found himself apprenticed to some merchant or another. The _Endless Bounty_ was full of orphaned or abandoned children, it always had been. Which was just as well, there were many jobs on ship that required small hands and nimble fingers. The work was often hard and dangerous, but most jobs for children were substantially less so that working as a power monkey or in the ironworks. The belt of an angry trader was no doubt preferable to the whip of a taskmaster in the_ Fabrica Munitio Imperialis_.

The boy clearly knew his foster brothers were dead. All the street children were inanimately aware of death. In the old days of Delivan Sáclair hunting the excess orphan population became something of a sport. The practice had been abolished close to three centuries ago but the perception of street children as less than human had never quite been quashed. There were still nobles offering rewards of ten thrones for each street child killed by the police.

Osma made a point of crucifying anyone guilty of 'culling the herd' in the center of the marketplace in front of the cathedral. He wanted to make sure that the Emperor could see the sins of the men clearly so that they might meet their judgement swiftly.

He'd always hoped the street children would understand this meant he was on their side. Judging by the sullen expression of the five year old sitting on the other side of the interrogation room the only part that got through was 'I kill people in public.' Worse still, it turns out that Cha'wu Xian raised this boy and his foster brothers for the better part of the past three years. Poisoning their opinions of the security forces no doubt.

Xian was a traitor, but he was still the closest thing the child had to a father. The very idea that he might have to break those bonds of trust made Osma's skin crawl, though not as much as the idea that one's father might blow up your house while you were still inside of it.

Osma stared at the child, trying not to be disturbed by the glassy emptiness in the boy's eyes. The child stared at Osma directly, carefully avoiding eye contact, "You're going to be staying with me for a while boy."

"Oh," the child stared through Osma rather than at him. Still avoiding catching Osma's eyes, "Am I?"

"Yes," Osma nodded, "Your brothers and master met with an accident."

"I know," the boy swallowed and stared at his feet. The aged leather of the secondhand shoes Nor had given the boy was scuffed and worn. They were probably the best shoes the boy had ever owned, "I was there."

Osma chuckled darkly, "Yes child, yes you were. Now do you have a name child? I cannot simply go about calling you child or boy."

"Xian always just called me apprentice or yelled orders," the child scratched the stubble along his head where his hair was growing back in, "Never really worried about a name."

"Your foster brothers must have called you something." Osma smiled in what he hoped was a comforting way, "A nickname?"

"They... they called me wormy," The boy rubbed his hands together furiously and shifted in his chair, little legs swinging backwards and forwards beating against the chair leg in a nervous tattoo.

"I have no intention of calling you wormy," Osma rubbed the sleep out of his eye as he pulled out a painkiller and chewed on the pill. The foul tasting capsule slid gloriously down his gullet, its unpleasant tang already numbing his aching jaw, "You'll need a proper name if you're going to be with me."

The boy looked down at the floor, "If you say so."

"Boy," Osma's voice cracked like a whip and the child flinched, his arms wrapping around his chest to make himself smaller. Osma's face fell, "No child, no."

He reached over and gently rested his hand on the boy's shoulder. The boy froze, terrified to move. Osma sighed, "Child, listen to me and listen to me well. I do not condone or allow striking a child. I cannot promise never to be angry with you but I will _never_ allow someone to strike you while I am around. Do you understand?"

"Sort of," the child said apprehensively. He probably wasn't the first to have said it to the boy, though he might have been the first to mean it, "I guess so."

"Good," Osma leaned back in his chair and stroked his beard, "Now I need to give you a name."

"How... how about Guilliman?" The child said hopefully, "Or Sanguinius?"

Osma chuckled, it was the sort of name he might have suggested for himself were he a five year old with a head full of tales of the great deeds of the Primarchs, "Why not simply take the name of the Emperor himself while you're at it child? No, I think we shall leave the names of the most holy to the Cult of the Emperor. Perhaps a saint's name might suit you better."

"Are you sure I can't be called Vulkan?" The boy had started swinging his entire body backwards and forwards in time with his legs. They were clearly reaching the edge of the child's patience for sitting still. The name 'wormy' started to make a great deal of sense.

"No child, you may not pick Vulkan as your name," He smiled apologetically, "I would probably have picked Rogal. No I think that Yunus suits you better."

"Yunus?" The boy made a face, "The fat child apprenticed to the baker with the oversized boil on his face is named Yunus."

"Well we can't have people associating you with giant boils now can we?" Osma patted the boy on the shoulder. The child still looked like he wanted to run away, but his flinch was slightly more delayed this time, "Efraim perhaps?"

"Efraim is an old person name." The child scrunched up is face and crossed his arms petulantly, "I'm not old."

"I'll have you know I have a good friend named Efraim." Osma ran a hand through his hair in exasperation.

"An old person," the child rolled his eyes, "With an old person name. I need a better name."

"Tariq perhaps? It means conqueror in the old tongue," Osma smiled at the boy's excited expression. The dreams of young boys were always of war and glory.

"Tariq," the child rolled the name around on his tongue, trying it out, "Tariq... Tariq... yes!"

"Very well Tariq," Osma patted his own stomach, "If you are to be my apprentice you are going to have to be properly fed. We are going to go down to the mess hall and grab a bite to eat with your fellow officers and apprentices. You're still a bit too young to train with the new recruits so for now I'm just going to have you tag along with me," reached down and lifted the boy's chin so that the Tariq would have to look him in the eyes, "Is that ok with you Tariq?"

"Can..." the boy hesitated, "Can we go somewhere I can pray afterwards? My brothers never got names. I want to make sure that the Emperor knows who they are... I don't want them to get lost in the crowd climbing the Golden Throne."

Osma beamed at the child, "I think some time at the church would do both of us some good."

He offered his hand to the child and Tariq grasped it hesitantly. He didn't have the boy's trust yet, but it was a start. First a meal, then prayer, then perhaps the boy would trust Osma enough to talk about Xian. Forcing the child to talk would only get the boy to clam up tighter than he already was.

He would get the Amon Sui bastards soon enough. For the moment helping a boy find peace would have to suffice.

* * *

The bald man stood to the side of the room watching Al'Ashir praying over the twisting and squirming man. Truth be told Al'Ashir was grateful for the company, praying for the souls of the unwell was often a lonely task. Their jailer seemed to take a very active interest in the wellness of his inmates, an uncommon trait for a man of his profession.

The unwell man groaned and sat up in bed blearily looking around the room. The balding man cleared his throat. Al'Ashir listened with wrapped attention trying to understand the curious speech of the Allaince, "You alright?"

The man rubbed the kinks out of his neck,"I never felt better. I'm the picture of health. Where am I?" He froze as he realized where he was, "Oh god… what did I do this time?"

"You don't remember?" The jailer asked calmly.

"I find that life, in general, is much easier if I forget most of the things that happen to me." Al'Ashir reached out to comfort the man but got his hand's slapped away by him.

"Well you were about to accuse the Centauri Ambassador of being in league with the Devil which might not be too far from the truth," He nodded to Al'Ashir, "And I wouldn't hit him if I were you. He may talk like he took too many blows to the head but he's spent the better part of the past day trying to keep you out of trouble."

"Yeah... thanks buddy," he said uncertainly to Al'Ashir wincing as he turned his neck, "Ow, my head hurts."

"Yeah we had to put you out." The Jailer shrugged.

"I was that bad?" Said the man in an unsurprised voice.

"You were standing in the middle of the plaza yelling that the day of judgement was coming."

"Did it?"

"No not that I know of but I may have missed a staff meeting," the Jailer sighed "You ever done this before?"

The man laughed, "I've done everything before."

The Jailer pulled up a chair and sits down close to the man, "Where were you stationed?"

"Nowhere special," the man rubbed his nose reflexively. More than likely he was recovering from some recreational substance or another, "Here and there. Just a gropo. No big deal."

"I figured you for a ground pounder. Me too." The jailer smiled and chuckled jovially.

"Looks like we both missed our chance to be heroes," said the man dejectedly.

"What about the dreams?" The jailer said pointedly.

"Dreams?" the man's eyes flitted about the room fearfully, "No I… I never dream."

The jailer wasn't buying it for a moment, "You've been talking in your sleep."

"Is there a reason that door is open?" the man snarled and scratched furiously at his own head. Little bits of collected grime flaked off him.

"You can go," the man rose and rushed for the door, eager to be out of the cell. The Jailer calmly watched him leaving as said, "I know some good councilors. I used them myself."

"Now what would a man with _everything_ in the world do with one of them eh?" The man waved his arms widely, his voice anything but convincing.

Al'Ashir stood to leave as well but the jailer pressed his hand to Al'Ashir's chest, "Sorry buddy. Not you."

"I must be going. The man is needing me," Al'Ashir nervously listened to the man's retreating footsteps with a deep sense foreboding. He could not allow the man to get away from him before he'd had a chance to save him from himself.

"I don't disagree with you padre," the jailer looked in the direction the man walked, "The man needs serious help from somebody and I'm not necessarily opposed to it being you. But honestly padre, I just can't let you go till we've gotten a couple things ironed out."

"It is my rights to spread word of Emperor to mankind," Al'Ashir flustered indignantly, "I may travel as I wish."

"In the Empire maybe," Garibaldi shrugged, "But in the Alliance you need to qualify for a missionary license first before you can start preaching to the masses. And I still need to find out how in the heck you snuck past security."

"It was will of the Emperor," Al'Ashir fumbled in English for the right words. The whole damned language seemed to be one giant mess of irregular words. It was as bad as High Gothic if not worse, "His will that I be here. His will that I preach his words."

"Could you point out where it was the Emperor's will you sneak past security on a map? It may have been the Emperor's will that _you_ get past my guys. I doubt that a dust smuggler is in his good books," the jailer rolled his eyes, clearly less than awed by the divinity of his cause.

"You joke of His will?" Al'Ashir shook his head in disappointment, "I have much teaching to do here my childrens."

"I'm not opposed to it buddy but you have to go through the proper channels for this stuff," the jailer shrugged, "We can sort this out when the Inquisitor gets here."

"Ah," Al'Ashir ran his hand through his beard nervously, "Yes... perhaps we should be talkings about that. If it is a matter of gold I have gold." He pulled out his heavy purse and poured a couple dozed thumb sized Imperial Thrones into his hand. The jailer's eyes bugged out at the sight of the satchel of gold.

"How in the heck did you keep that freaking sack of gold in down below? The Lurkers would knife a man for a nickel, let alone a sack for fragging gold," the jailer blinked in surprise. He reflexively reached out for the coins then drew back his hand as though it had been scalded.

An honorable man. A pity, this would have been much easier if he could be bribed. He smiled at the man, "The Emperor protects."

"Then the Emperor may patiently protect you in this cell till the Inquisitor arrives to sort this whole mess out."

"Very well then," Al'Ashir smiled, "Perhaps you might be open to listening to his word."

"Uh... yeah," the jailer looked over his shoulder at the open door, "Look buddy I've got stuff to get done."

"Brother confessor Al'Ashir," said Al'Ashir as he pulled out his player book and thumbed through the pages.

"Michael Garibaldi," the Jailer replied, "Look have fun praying, or meditating, or whatever it is you do. I need to go meet up with the Captain for a meeting. I'll be back soon with the Inquisitor and we can smooth this all out."

"Very well Michael," Al'Ashir smiled at the jailer as he left the cell, "I will pray for you while you are gone my childrens."

"Pray extra," the jailer chuckled, "I've done a good bit of sinning."

Al'Ashir smiled as he kneeled down to pray. The ones worth putting in the effort to save usually had. This was indeed an auspicious day for the Word.

* * *

The family meal was a tradition the Lady Sáclair started after the birth of Marco, the captain's third bastard child off his concubines. She'd decided that if she could not stop her husband from sowing his seed wherever he wished she could at least see to it that the 'wild oats' and those cultivated intentionally did not grow to resent each other. To that effect she had insisted that the entire extended family of the Captain would meet for a meal at least once a week.

The first several attempts weren't as idillic as the Lady Sáclair had imagined in her head Ami suspected. More often than not the Lady acted as a peace maker between Sáclair's four concubines for most of the meal and as a peace maker between the children for the rest.

They had since separated the children and the parents into two separate rooms when they ate meals together. Ami liked to believe that it had improved the relationship between the siblings.

For all the passive aggressive sniping and pointless arguments that arose at the table Ami liked the family meetings. She did not often get to see her younger siblings. The youngest, Agustus, was barely out of diapers but had as much sheer cheek and flirt in him as his father. He wandered the dining hall all fat cheeks and wide smiles for the serving girls, raising his arms to the air and saying "up." He was going to be a heart breaker some day.

Paulo, slightly older than his brother, had progressed to the 'girls are icky' stage of his development and watched his brothers actions with a confused mix of envy and disgust. He kept elbowing his half brother Vincente and whispering in his brother's ear before the two of them dissolved into giggles, doubtlessly wispering dirty things to each other they'd overhead from the Lionhearts. Her youngest sister Marian kept whining to them to let her in on their secret talk, prodding at Vinciente's ribs in annoyance.

Abbas' chair was absent, as were those of the twins Bartimius and Iswin. Abbas' training with the Magos consumed the majority of his time and the twins were back in Imperial space training in the Schola Progenitum. The table felt horriby lonely now that the three of them were gone. Antony was good company to be sure, but he was a bit bland for Ami's taste. Were as Abbas, Bartimius or Iswin would gladly have been plotting some mischief with her Antony was glad to simply sit quietly and observe the other people at the table.

With her elder siblings Vigo, Marco, and Aryana in the hospital visiting David that essentially meant the only people to speak with at the table were her elder sisters Carran and Arda. It had been years since Carran last attended a family meal. If Ami had her way it would be years more till the next one.

"I'm telling you Carran I don't think they're looking in the right places for this guy," Ami crossed her arms frustratedly and scowled at her sister, "At best they're just getting him to go underground while the security forces are in place."

"Ami must you talk about this at the table?" Carran massaged her temples in frustration her face the picture of patient suffering. Ami would have liked to toss the dinner roll on her plate straight into Carran's face, "It is hardly an appropriate topic for conversation."

"I find the topic to be fascinating," Antony said in placid indifference, "What is it that makes you believe that the current measures are only stop gap measures?"

"Because we don't have enough security officers to have them patrolling the Belzafest quarter indefinitely," Arda wiped the sides of her mouth with a napkin, "My word that soup is superb. Pass a roll will you?"

"Exactly!" exclaimed Ami as she passed the plate of bread, "Shakut's men are good but any clues they had were destroyed when the crime scenes blew up."

"And what exactly do you propose to do about it?" Chuckled Carran, "Solve it yourself?"

"I could," protested Ami, "I'm as clever as any."

"More than most I suspect... no not at the dinner table!" Antony snagged the butter knives Paulo and Vinciente were about to sword fight with before turning back to Ami, "But I don't think it is wise for you to seek out a murderer Ami. For that matter I don't think its wise for any of us to go anywhere on the ship without a sufficient escort."

"I have no need of any such protection," hissed Carran indignantly.

"Yes," Arda rolled her eyes behind her spectacles, "You do Carran. Thrones be blessed girl use your head, if Ami's murderer isn't Amon Sui then the bomber more than certainly is. I know you have private security but I will be speaking with the Lady about having the Lionhearts follow all of us."

"I'm not so sure about that," Ami started hesitantly. She was as reluctant as Carran to be followed by the Lionhearts at all times.

"You especially," Arda brandished her fork in Ami's direction, "I know you too well sister. You're about to go on some fool mission. Well this is the end of it. I dislike losing privacy as much as you but certain things take precedent over our own comfort. No more running into damned battles."

"I didn't go looking for trouble," Ami protested, "I just wanted to help."

"Well you just helped your way into having a Lionheart with you at all times," Antony crossed his arms in resignation.

Ami scowled indignantly, even as the sandy blonde hair and brilliant white teeth of Sergi flashed in her memory. Perhaps having a Lionheart around her at all times wouldn't be all bad.

* * *

Dr. Franklin's report was grim, "At the time of death the victim's weight was ninety pounds. Based upon his height and his bone structure his normal weight should have been about one hundred and eighty but malnutrition wasn't what killed him. He died as a result of organ failure."

"Why" Mr. Garibaldi said suspiciously flipping through the chart, his eyes flitting about the page in confusion.

"I don't know. They're missing. It's as though something reached inside of him and pulled them out." Doctor Franklin pointed to the data display, highlighting the missing organs. How in the heck did something tear out the organs without leaving a mark on the skin?

"What happened to the organs?" Mr. Garibaldi made a disgusted face. John couldn't help but share the feeling. Organs did not simply get up and walk away.

"There's no evidence of them anywhere on the ship. We ran a complete scan if there was so much as a cell remaining we'd have found it." Dr. Franklin shook his head in wonderment, his face utterly flummoxed. That was... disturbing on a level John didn't even know how to describe.

Something came into the pod, tore out a man's organs without breaking the skin and then disappeared without leaving a trace. It was like some horrible ghost story.

Mr. Garibaldi sighed, "I think we'd better have a talk with the woman who was with him."

"No I don't think that's such a good idea yet." Dr. Franklin shook his head firmly.

"A man's been murdered and the list of suspects is pretty short." Mr. Garibaldi said flippantly.

Dr. Franklin shook his head, "According to the ship's logs she was in stasis the whole time."

There were times where John had difficulty if Dr. Franklin's blind faith in people was optimism or naivety, "Logs can be altered. It's a safe bet he didn't reach down his throat and pull out his own heart."

Dr. Franklin's scowled angrily but before the good doctor could respond his link chimed. He raised it to his ear in frustration, "Yes?"

"She's awake and asking for you Dr. Franklin."

"I have to go," Dr. Franklin collected his papers and data pad, shoving them into his satchel.

"When she's ready I want to talk to her," John stated firmly. If nothing else he owed this woman a conversation before he accused her of murder.

"Finish up for me," Dr. Franklin nodded to Michael and rushed out of the room.

"Lousy way to die huh," Mr. Garibaldi stared at the diagram of the dead man with a slightly nauseous expression.

John shook his head and turned the morbid image off, "Last time I checked there weren't too many good ways."

Michael looked down at his watch, "Crud! I have to go sir. The Inquisitor is coming down to pick up the priest we found this morning. I'm already going to be late."

"Then you'd better hurry Mr. Garibaldi," John sighed and dismissed his security officer. He sat down at his desk and turned to the photo of his dead wife, "It's always something isn't it?"

The photo did not reply.

* * *

Daul paced impatiently in the brig's waiting room outside of the processing center. It was like everything on the Babylon station, grey, sterile and functional. The very idea of calling him down to the brig to see Father Al'Ashir then making him wait around for Mr. Garibaldi to have a time for him was insufferable. He was a bloody Inquisitor.

The toad of a man who'd been given the duty of doorkeeper refused to allow Daul access to the cells even if he left the Xenos, the Skitarii, and the Ogryn in the waiting room. He'd given some excuse to do with telepathic regulations but Daul was willing to bet the security chief had given orders not to allow him in without Mr. Garibaldi's direct supervision.

"If you keep pacing like that you'll drive yourself insane Inquisitor," G'Kar said over the cover of his book, "Mr. Garibaldi will be back soon. The man is scrupulously punctual."

"Then where is he," Daul hissed, "I see no security officer other than that," he jabbed furiously in the direction of the dour faced man at the main desk, "Impudent cur who had the unmitigated gall to deny me access to my countryman and my property."

"I dislike the reference to a living being as property Inquisitor," G'Kar adjusted the collar of his jerkin, "It has certain unpleasant precedents with my people."

"We may have a discussion on the ethics of it once Dorn is back on my Throne cursed ship," Daul breathed deeply resisted the urge to simply tear the door off it's hinges. It would be all too easy. Peace, calm, he needed these people.

"Indeed," G'Kar flipped the page with a flourish.

"What on earth are you reading anyway? You've been sitting there with that book in your hand since we arrived," Daul examined the scribbled writing on the cover.

"What this?" G'Kar looked down at it, "A mere curiosity of mine. It is a history of the expeditions into Vorlon space."

"It was my understanding that expeditions into Vorlon space do not return," Daul looked to Cairn for confirmation. The Skitarii shrugged. How should he know?

G'Kar chuckled, "Yes, the ending of each story is rather similar. But what interests me is _why_ these people go into what is clearly a suicidal situation."

"I would have thought that was obvious," Daul blinked in confusion.

"Obvious," G'Kar looked up from his book.

"Galut," Daul turned to the wide faced man. The Ogryn was sitting as still as he could manage, doing his best to look well behaved. Upon hearing his name the Ogryn stood up as though he'd just been plugged into a live wire and snapped off a quick salute. His head collided with the ceiling, denting the plating of the ship's hull, "Wut sir?"

"Why would someone go on a suicide mission Galut?"

"Wut?" The ogryn's slaute faltered fearfully, "Right now you mean sir? Do I have to?"

"No," Daul shook his head, "For pretend. Why would someone go on a mission that they knew they couldn't come back from. One that they don't _have _to go on."

"Cuz its da' right fing' ta do I suppose," the Ogryn squinted hard as though he'd been given a complex math equation, "Yeah. Oi'd do it cuz it was the right fing' ta do."

G'Kar smiled, "Much the same conclusion anyone might come to. But what is it that makes something the right thing? How do we decide it?"

"Ambassador," Daul shook his head and looked to the door, "You're over analyzing a simple thing. Right and wrong aren't choices we make, they're choices made for us once we've been long dead." He smiled as an ambient sensation of resigned duty crept up to the door, "And unless I miss my guess the local arbiter of right and wrong approaches."

* * *

Michael entered the brig five minutes later than he'd intended to only to find the Inquisitor and his retinue sitting in the waiting area along with the Narn Ambassador of all people, "Inquisitor Hilder, you're early."

"Mr. Garibaldi," The Inquisitor replied. Small flames flickered unnervingly in his eyes, "You're late. I do not appreciate being kept waiting."

"I'm sure you don't," Michael had no intention of playing the Inquisitor's word games or of being intimidated by his eery psychic voodoo. The man was a glorified diplomat and would be treated just like every other uppity diplomat, "But we can't always get what we want."

"I want my man and my property Mr. Garibaldi," the Inquisitor rubbed together his thumb and forefinger in frustration, small sparks spat out.

"You singe the carpet and you're paying for it buddy," Michael walked past the Inquisitor ignoring Cairn entirely, "You can bring Galut with you into the holding cells but the tin man and G'Kar are going to have to wait outside."

"I must insist that Cairn be permitted to come with us," Hilder stated in a tone of dangerous calm. Michael was apparently skating on the edge of his patience.

"Then I must insist that Al'Ashir stays a guest of my cells," Michael tossed the sign in clip board to the Inquisitor, "I don't allow anything with a recording device or capable of hacking a lock into the cells. To my knowledge Cairn is more than capable of both."

"Ah," The Inquisitor nodded, "Very well. We will comply. Cairn, wait."

The mechanical man crossed his arms and leaned against the wall making petulant warbling noises and shooting Michael dirty looks. Michael rolled his eyes, "Look buddy take it as a compliment. You're the most dangerous lock pick I've seen in ages. You're like a walking prison break."

The warbling dulled down to an occasional tweet, even if the sullen body language didn't change.

Michael motioned to the turnkey and the light above the entrance to the holding cells flashed green. Michael pushed the button to activate the door and motioned to Daul, "After you. We're heading for cell 15."

"Too kind," the Inquisitor said dryly as he entered the holding area and eyed the full swat team in riot gear and gas-masks, "Are they for my benefit?"

"I remember your performance on the bridge Inquisitor. You try that here and we'll just pump the hallway full of a powerful sedative," Michael smiled charmingly, "I like to have all my bases covered."

Michael nodded to the riot squad, they took their places in front of and behind the Inquisitor, side arms at the ready. Rather than looking off put by the treatment the Inquisitor seemed out right giddy.

"Quite," the Inquisitor chuckled amusedly, "Well, this is more like it. I was starting to feel like a damned house pet. Shall we continue then Mr. Garibaldi?"

"Yeah," Michael strode towards Dorn's cell at a healthy pace, trying to keep in stride with the Inquisitor's long shanks, "You do realize that I cannot release Dorn into your custody."

"Your Captain said as much," Hilder glared icily at Michael, "I have you to thank for that I understand."

"We aren't sure how he fits under our legal system," Michael scrutinize the Inquisitor right on back, "If Dorn is truly non-sentient property then we're actually obligated to destroy him entirely as he technically constitutes an illegal bio-weapon. If he qualifies as sentient then because your government has no established extradition treaty we are obligated to try him under our system."

"You have no intention of releasing him to me do you?" Hilder raised an eyebrow. His distinguished features looked distinctly hawkish in the dull light of the corridor.

"Unless you establish a very specific extradition treaty before you leave here today that applies ex post facto to crimes committed while on station I don't see it happening," Michael shook his head, "And considering how much he talks I don't see Dorn as being classified as non-sentient."

Michael continued walking for a few steps before he realized the Inquisitor was not following him. Hilder stood stock still, apparently processing what Michael just said, "Dorn... is talking?"

"Yes," Michael failed to see the relevance of it, "Mostly incoherent chanting about angels but he is talking."

"Cell 15 right?" The Inquisitor didn't wait for Michael to finish saying yes before bolting towards cell 15 at a dead sprint. Balefire flickered around his entire body as the man muttered to himself furiously in his native tongue.

"Oh you have got to be _kidding_ me," Michael broke into a run after the Inquisitor, struggling to keep up with the man's impressive sprint. He caught up with the Imperial ten yards up the corridor as Hilder stared into the open window of the cell in abject horror.

"How did I not see that this would happen! By the throne! How blind am I? A regenerative... it would fix everything the body naturally saw as an error," The Inquisitor looked to the furious mass of muscle and sinew in the cell beyond, "The damn replicator glands are probably manufacturing it by themselves now. They got more than enough to replicate the pattern."

"Want to share with the class Hilder?" Michael snapped his fingers in front of the other man's face.

"War servitors are kept in a murderous rage at all times that is only suppressed with drugs and hypnotic triggers. I cannot always guarantee that I have regular access to the facilities necessary to fabricate the narcotics used to keep an arco-flagellant docile," He ran his hands through his hair, "I had him implanted with a unique organ designed to replicate the narcotics internally. With the proper gene triggers they could be made to replicate the anti-agapics used by most of the imperial nobility."

"Anti-agapics? Age reversing drugs," Michael had flashes to the Deathwalker incident.

"Mr. Garibaldi, a properly powerful vat of anti-agapic restorative can grow a human from a single cell," Daul Hilder looked at the psychotically grinning face of Dorn behind the window, "And now Sotu'an Taka, a man responsible for the deaths of six thousand people is regrowing brain function. Mr. Garibaldi this is no longer a request I will be taking Dorn with me when I leave here. One way or another he is coming with me. Sotu'an Taka must not be allowed to regain his higher brain functions."

"I am not going to release a man to you so that you can lobotomize him. I don't care if he's Adolf Hitler himself, as long as he's under my custody he is guaranteed a trial by jury and equal protection under the law," Michael pointed to the admittedly terrifying face of Dorn as the man rubbed his face across the window, leaving a trail of spit, "I cannot allow you to torture this helpless man."

Galut shot Michael a meaningful look, his choice of words was apparently a mistake. "I will be leaving with this man Mr. Garibaldi. You cannot stop me when the time comes," Hilder said in a voice of complete confidence.

"Try it," Michael spread his arms, "I'll be right here waiting. In the meantime are you going to take back your preacher or should I plan on him being a long term resident."

"As tempting as leaving him in a cell is I fear leaving him behind would be more problematic than taking him with me," The Inquisitor's shot one last angry look at Dorn, "Very well where is he?"

* * *

The woman from the sleeper ship sat in bed, doing her best to swallow a cup of water. Considering that she hadn't been making use of the muscles for the better part of a century she was making quite a go of it.

She smiled happily at Stephen when he wandered over to her bed and grabbed her chart. Scrawled in the illegible script of one of the nurse was the name _Miranda Cirrus_. Finally, a name to go with the face, "Well looking a lot better."

She positively beamed at him, "Well I'm feeling a lot better thanks to you doctor…"

Stephen offered his hand, "Franklin."

She shook it jovially and he added hastily, "Stephen."

Stephen looked down at the largely empty chart. Now was as good a time to fill in the blanks as any. He clicked the pen and smiled at Miranda. "If you don't mind me asking a couple of questions what were you doing on that ship?"

"Will, my husband, and I are part of a commercial research group. They needed volunteers for a long term deep space research mission and I jumped at the chance. They assigned us to the Copernicus. She was programmed to home in on any signal we might come across and wake us up," she chewed her lip and looked around the hospital excitedly, "I never though the signal could be of human origin. How long were we in stasis."

Stephen read her eager expression with some concern, "I think we should take this a day at a time."

"That doesn't sound very good," damn, she was perceptive. He'd been hoping to delay this to avoid shocking her system. It had already been through substantial stress, "How long."

"Well I don't have the exact number," Stephen hesitated, "but over one hundred years."

"A _hundred_ years?" Miranda's face went white as a sheet and she looked around the room, "I'd like to see Will now."

Stephen froze unsure what to say. Sorry to tell you this but something ate your husband's organs just felt a bit callous. And as long as she was a suspect in the man's murder he didn't even know where to begin.

Miranda swallowed nervously, "Something's wrong isn't it?"

Well he had to say something otherwise he would just be standing there staring awkwardly, "I'm afraid he died during the voyage,"

"Oh god," Miranda grabbed her face, unable to believe the words.

"We still haven't been able to determine exactly what happened." It wasn't strictly a lie. They knew that William had been murdered, they just hadn't got a clue how or why it had been done.

"We just said goodnight to each other," Miranda rubbed her face and stared at Stephen with absolute panic in her voice, "I can't cry."

"Long term stasis dries the tear ducts," Stephen got in close and examined her eyes, double checking that there was no permanent damage.

"Oh god what have I done," Miranda grabbed his hand and looked into his eyes, her gaze pleading for everything that happened to just be some terrible nightmare. Stephen couldn't do anything other than squeeze her hand and sit there while she tearlessly sobbed, mourning a husband lost decades ago.

* * *

"Father Al'Ashir I presume?" Daul leaned door frame in amusement looking into the dimly lit cell, glad to be speaking in High Gothic. Though, now that he thought about it for a moment, it was substantially larger and more luxurious that the quarters Al'Ashir chose to inhabit on the bounty.

"Inquisitor Hilder," Father Al'Ashir rose from his morning prayers positively quivering with excitement, "I have finally found my calling in His name!"

"I suspect that He doesn't need you to be in prison Al'Ashir. The worst crime you've committed that I can think of was that insufferably boring sermon about the importance of trust three months ago," Daul smiled and nodded towards the door, "Come on then. Let's get you out of here."

"Are we all good here?" Mr. Garibaldi rapped on the door, clearly eager to break off the conversation before he became trapped listening to High Gothic at length, "Not that I want to stop this love fest but if you're taking him can you take this conversation on the road."

"A second please Mr. Garibaldi," Father Al'Ashir said in heavily accented English, "Inquisitor I am wishing to start a permanent mission on station."

"Father Al'Ashir I haven't got a clue what is involved in that," Daul massaged his throbbing temples, "Nor am I inclined to leave you alone on this station when we leave. Perhaps when we get back to the Empire and send a more permanent presence in this sector of space."

"Inquisitor I am not fool," Al'Ashir fixed him with a scowl that would have had priest adepts and alter boys cowering in fear, "I do not plan to start a mission here in two hundred years I mean to start a mission _now_."

"Two _hundred_ years?" Mr. Garibaldi interjected, "Just how far away is the Empire."

"Further than close and closer than forever," Daul spat back flippantly. He had hoped Al'Ashir would simply pester Sáclair about this insane plan to open a mission on station, "Mr. Garibaldi I am taking Father Al'Ashir with me. I would take it as a kindness if you would assist me in escorting him to a transport. As his only crime is trespassing I hope that would be an acceptable solution."

Al'Ashir scowled, "I will not be walked off this station at gun point Inquisitor. I am a man of peace. If you must use force on me to have your way so be it. I will follow you, but I know that me being on this station is the will of the Emperor. Mark my words Daul. He will aid me."

Daul smiled sadly, "The Emperor protects Al'Ashir, but he doesn't always give us what we want when we want it. Take pride in that we've found the Alliance at all."

* * *

Normally Stephen wouldn't consider taking a patient out of the recovery room this soon but keeping Miranda in the sterile recovery room was only going to give her more time to brood and regret. The faster he could get her scientist mind working on other things the faster she would be able to get on with her life. The hospital was only ten minutes away from the Bazaar and if ever there was a place to lose yourself in the moment, it was in the Bazaar.

Miranda froze in astonishment as they exited the lift and a Markab wandered past. Her eyes were wide as saucers as she tried to look everywhere at once. It was like watching a child in a candy shop. She was so interested in everything she could see that her body simply did nothing as her brain tried to reconcile all of it.

Stephen chuckled and gave her a little push to start her walking, "You've never seen an alien before have you?"

"There were indications that there were other life forms but I never imagined anything like that," she crooned with anticipation as Stephen guided her over to a nearby café, "I've missed so much."

"Well, not all of it's been good." Stephen said, thinking back to the Earth-Minbari war, "A few years after your ship left Earth we finally made contact with another species, the Centauri. We opened up trade relations and they gave us jump gate technology."

"Before that we'd been pretty much limited to our own solar system." Stephen waved apologetically.

"After that we were out among the stars," Stephen waved his arms wide, "First leasing time on alien jump gates and then building our own."

"So the cryogenic suspension, the goodbyes… was all for nothing." Miranda's voice darkened, hinting at another bout of depression, "If we'd just waited a few more years…"

"You couldn't have known," Stephen patted her hand in awkward compassion, "What you did, it took vision. It took courage."

"What else did I miss?" Miranda said longingly.

"The usual. The good times and the bad times. The revelations and the revolutions. Outbreaks of hysteria, the parade of promises, consequences, constitutions and the occasional war," Stephen paused considering his words, "The last big ones were against the Dilgar which we won and against the Minbari which… well that's a long story."

"And we still haven't outgrown violence?" Miranda's face fell disappointedly.

"No," Stephen chuckled, "It's going to take a lot more than a hundred years to evolve a better human."

Ambassador G'Kar wandered over to the table with Inquisitor Daul. Stephen smiled, he'd been worried that the Ambassador's fears that the Centauri might have poisoned the imperial opinion of the Narn Empire had been valid.

"Ambassador, Inquisitor," Stephen paused when he got to the bearded man to the right of the Inquisitor.

"Father Al'Ashir," supplied G'Kar, "Apparently a member of the Imperial clergy."

"Well," Stephen nodded politely and offered his hand, "Hello." The priest took it gladly, bowing slightly as he shook it.

G'Kar smiled brightly at Miranda, "This must be our visitor from the past,"

"Miranda, this is Ambassador G'Kar of the Narn and Inquisitor Daul of the Empire," Stephen was grateful for the Imperial Ambassador's presence even if the man was sour tempered. He was substantially less overwhelming than most of the other aliens.

"The future is always changing madam," G'Kar smiled at her brightly, "And we will change with it. It is what we make it."

And then the screaming started.

* * *

Miranda fell to the ground twitching in an epileptic fit, screaming about some great beast coming for her in the night. A stabbing shoot of warp energy rocketed up Daul's spine out of nowhere, a bone chilling reminder of the presence of the Great Enemy. Daul froze for a second when the woman began before leaping into action, "She's been posessed Al'Ashir!"

"What?" Al'Ashir blinked in shock, "Here? How? These people know nothing of the warp."

"When has that ever stopped the Great Enemy?" Daul pulled a sliver rod covered in hexigrammic wards from his pocket and pointed to Miranda, "Galut! Hold her down. Cairn, keep the onlookers away."

Dr. Franklin protested vehemently when Cairn pulled him off the woman but could do little other than protest as he was carried away. G'Kar grabbed Daul by the shoulder hissing angrily, "Inquisitor what do you think you are doing?"

"Ambassador I am saving this woman from the worst fate imaginable. There are soldiers of darkness from the ancient times, we both know that. But some of them are more subtle than others. Not if you wish this woman to live I _must_ be allowed to finish my work," he pushed the Ambassador back with gentle burst of psychic discharge.

Daul kneeled down next to the violently seizing and screaming woman and placed the rod in the woman's mouth. The wards within the silver rod glowed a violent red light and started to spark angrily, "Al'Ashir the right of Exorcisim! I need the word empowering this, I do not know the beast's name."

The priest did not need to be told twice. He began to sing the Chant of Banishing, invoking the names of the Emperor, Primarchs, and Sainted Matryrs of the Empire. The words calmed Daul's mind and focused his spirit.

"This woman is not yours demon," Daul placed his hands on the woman's forehead and plunged into her mind. Her mind was a tumultuous mess of fear, loss and confusion. It was the perfect cocktail of emotions for a creature of the warp to feed off to sustain itself.

Daul searched the fragmented landscape of the girls mind, searching for the beast's link to her. He wandered past images of houses, trees, shadowy figures of friends and memories of emotion, bursting and brimming with color and feeling, till he reached the dull rust colored image of a rust-bucket freighter.

There was something bad within that freighter, something wrong. He stepped towards it and got an image of running down some dark corridor in his mind. He felt the stale air upon his face. He felt fresh blood dripping from his lips and hands, sticky and sweet from a fresh kill.

Daul retched, the sick bastard was playing with her. He wanted her to watch what he did to others so that she would know that he would one day do it to her. It wanted to feed on her fear, it wanted to gorge itself on terror and despair so that it could sustain itself on chunks of her soul as long as was possible.

Well, two could play at this game. Daul would not let humans be easy prey to some unholy abomination. Daul forced himself into the ship and grasped at the shadow tendrils that tethered it to the demon. He drove his arms into them, rejecting the sensations of wretchedness and slime. He shoved his fingers to the core and grabbed hold of them, tight as he could and projected all the pain he had ever felt in his entire life in one moment.

The tendrils twitched and tried to retract but Daul would not let them, he continued to feed agony directly into the demon's mind. Again, and again, and again he forced the memories of being flayed alive, of being tortured, of being stabbed, of being burned and all manner of unpleasantness into the creature's mind. He pumped them into the creature's core till he could hold on no longer and let go of the tendrils.

The demon hurriedly tired to regain it's hold on the woman's mind, but too late. Daul pushed every last scrap of the creature out, barricading the hole in the woman's mind with bricks of his own pain and using his hatred of chaos as the mortar.

He gasped as he left the woman's mind, watching in shock as a tendril of balefire flew from the woman's body and out of the bazaar. Sentients screamed and ducked the billowing black ball of fire as it rocketed into the distance, screaming with unholy fury. The hexigrammic wards in the woman's mouth flared white, then disappeared.

Her ragged breathing soothed and she relaxed enough that Galut could let go of her without risking her doing harm to herself. Daul took the silver gag out of her mouth, stood, and found himself face to face with the the livid face of Talia Winters. She was standing with a PPG in one hand and her Psi Corps badge in the other, "Inquisitor Daul you just committed a forceable intrusion into a woman's mind in plain view of several dozen witnesses. I would ask you what the hell you were thinking but it is abundantly clear to me that you weren't thinking at all."

"Miss Winters, I am not the one you want to point that firearm at. You have an greater problem to deal with. There is a demon on the station. We are all in grave danger." He looked over his shoulder and flinched in terror as a psychic scream ripped through the station, the rage of the beast tearing through reality, "Miss Winters, I need you to trust me or we _will_ all die."

* * *

Sorry this is only half a chapter but I've been doing relief work at a food bank in Kyoto for most of the month. There should be another one of roughly this length within the week.

I wrote and edited this on my cell phone so if anyone sees any errors please feel free to point them out. I know this chapter isn't up to my usual standard.

Thank you to everyone who's written reviews and a special thank you to those of you who send me messages asking questions. I wish I could answer them but it would ruin the big reveal later on.


	12. Chapter 12

Garibaldi may have given up drinking but a man must have at least some vices or he'd go insane. Garibaldi's vice of choice was food. Hearty wonderful, cholesterol rich, melt in your mouth, take a nap afterwards because you can barely move your toes, just like mother used to make italian goodness.

Real cheese was worth the added cost. Synthetics were about ten times cheaper and arguably had the same nutritional content, but they just weren't the same. They weren't made with love.

Sure, his favorite restaurant on the station had a chinese chef who'd learned to make pizza in chicago, but that only added to the ambiance. And even though it wasn't up to the standards of Italy, or even Brooklyn for that matter, it still beat the hell out of that pathetic excuse for a pizza joint the Brakiri opened up last year. Their fondness for fermented mushrooms and fish luminescent fish appeared to have overpowered their sense of esthetics.

A pizza should not produce a small cloud of purple fog.

He smiled at the savory taste of his own food only pausing the rhythmic movement of fork to lips briefly when when the meal of the Drazi next to him made a run for it. The still living squid creature dragged the plate back towards an open tank of bubbling water.

The Drazi stabbed his errant dinner, pinning it to the bar. He looked up happily, apparently thrilled that his meal still had some fight in it. Supposedly living food aided in the digestive processes of the Drazi species.

"No, no thanks," Michael politely declined as the Drazi tried to offer him a still wriggling tentacle of something covered in pesto. The fragrance of the basil only partially overcame the musky odor of the mottled purple and blue flesh beneath, "I'm trying to cut down."

He was saved from having to decline a second tentacle by a screech of dismay. The crowd of idle shopper's parted as the residents of Babylon rushed to get out of an filthy apoplectic panegyarist. Amis, the lurker he'd let out of the drunk tank earlier that day, was standing on yet another counter-top screaming at the top of his lungs.

The lurker's eyes were wild and his face contorted into an insane expression, "You're all gonna die. The soldier of darkness from the past has come on that ship."

Michael pushed away the delicious smelling plate, nodding to the Drazi next to him, "Save me some dessert." The Drazi shrugged and went back to battling with his errant lunch, apparently unconcerned.

"Don't close your eyes don't go to sleep! It will find you." Amis waved his arms wide, dancing a jig on top of the counter. A frustrated looking Abbai chef swatted at the lurker's feet with an oven mitt, swearing furiously. Amis jumped off the counter, oblivious to the Abbai, ran over to Michael, and hugged him more than Michael would have cared to receive, "Brother Garibaldi I was looking for you."

Michael twisted Ami's arm behind the lurker's back and dragged him away, noting offhandedly that Amis had left brown streaks of oil along Michael's crisp uniform, "Lets take a walk. You're starting to make the natives restless,"

"I'm not crazy it's on this station," Amis yanked his arm out of Michael's grip. The wild man smelled foul and his face was even dirtier than it had been earlier that day. He had to have been crawling through the engineering access tunnels along the edge of the station to get covered in that much engine grease.

"Death," Amis screeched as much out of fear as anger. It was a hollow desperate sound, the sort a child might have used in convincing his parents that the monster under the bed was real. "It came off that ship from the past. I found it."

"You're sure," Garibaldi said, unsure why the man's words were striking true with him. It was the sanest and most coherent Amis had sounded yet.

"I saw it do the same thing during the war," Amis nodded then fell to his knees in pain, grasping his own shoulders, and twitching in pain. He yanked at his hair, "It's... it's in pain."

Amis gritted his teeth, grinning manically and looking happier than Garibaldi had ever seen him. A deep menacing howl echoed from the depths of the station. A shrill, piercing sound somewhere like nails on a chalk board mixed with a distant echoing crowing. There was something wrong, something very wrong.

Michael's link chimed and he answered it, grabbing Amis tightly by the shirt, "Garibaldi here. You want to tell me what in the heck is going on?"

"Sir. The Inquisitor just conducted some sort of Exorcism in the Baazar... he's claiming that there is a demon on the station," the confused voice of Officer Shiro replied, "Sir... you need to get down here. We're losing control of the situation."

Michael swore, "I'll be there in a minute."

Amis made a break for it but Michael held firm, "Oh no, get over here. We are going down to processing first."

* * *

"A demon. There is a demon on the station?" It felt odd and unnatural to be saying out loud to a grown man. It was the craziest thing she had every heard someone say out loud. The PPG shook in her hand as she felt stoic resolution roll off the Inquisitor in waves, "My god... you actually believe that don't you?"

Inquisitor Daul believed that there was a demon on the station with absolute conviction, there was not a shred of doubt in the man's mind. His utter faith to that one truth was actually a bit overwhelming. He stared her in the eyes unblinkingly, totally ignoring the presence of the armed security forces massed round them, "Your belief in it is irrelevant. If you do not allow me to take action now people will die."

The massed group of aliens and humans started muttering to each other fearfully. More than a few of them were giving significant glances in the direction of G'Kar, who had not taken a single step away from the Inquisitor's side even after station security started pointing weapons. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Hilder. His brow furrowed and his glowing red eyes narrowed, burning with an alien sort of satisfied conviction.

Damn it, the Narn was giving an air of legitimacy to to the Inquisitor's insane ravings. This had to be part of some political scheme of the Inquisitor's, thought to what end she could not even begin to guess. The politics of the Empire was as much of a mystery as its location.

Officer Shiro took a step towards the Inquisitor but froze mid step as the Skitarii growled menacingly and spread his tentacles, metallic pincers snapping a terrible staccato. The bodyguard's posture spread unnaturally, a subtle reminder that the body beneath his robes was anything but human.

Talia bit her lip nervously. The chances that the Inquisitor actually complied with the Captain's request to remove all hidden weapons from the station were close to nil. Even if Thross no longer had the personal shielding unit who knew how many weapons were incorporated into his body.

"Inquisitor you will comply with us," Officer Shiro backed up from Thross, waving his pistol backward and forward as he tried to keep all the Imperials covered, "I don't know what it is that you did to that woman but it sure as hell wasn't legal."

"Foolish boy!" The Inqusitor's voice rumbled with the thread of imminent psychic hazard, "I saved the woman. She was possessed by a hungering spirit. I cannot allow you to delay me in this matter. If I do not act it may well be disastrous."

"And if you do not come with me into custody it will be deadly," Talia nodded to the pistol in her hand, "Inquisitor even if you can stop one, two, or even ten of us with the psychic powers you are fond of reminding me are superior to mine, you will not be able to get off this station before we manage to capture or kill you. If a PPG doesn't get you, shutting off an airlock and venting the oxygen to space will. Even if you do get to a transport then you'll just make a nice target for the station's guns."

The Inquisitor glowered, his voice smoldering with fury. The cups and plates in the cafe shook as the Inquisitor drew in power, "Insolent witch, I should flay you alive for your sheer foolishness. You would doom us all for your inaction."

"From the demon," Talia snorted in disbelief, dismissively, as though the Inquisitor's effortless display of telekinesis did not rattle her, "The demon you exorcized."

"Spirit was cast from mortal vessel," the Imperial priest linked his thumbs together in the symbol of the Imperial Eagle, bowing his head deeply and cradling a thick tome, "So it is written so it shall be."

A Markab woman crowed furiously from the edge of the crowd, "Darkness has taken the station! Touched by darkness we all are," he pointed to the girl still cradled in Galut's tree trunk sized arms, "We must remove the bringer of darkness not the one who fights it!" The general murmurs of assent from the collected aliens was not reassuring.

Babylon Five was a haven and port of call for all the races of the Non-aligned worlds, including a number of theocracies like that of Markab. The Inquisitor's psychically empowered light show was playing off the superstitions of any number of them.

"Lord save us from your followers," muttered Shiro in a whisper that was clearly intended to be heard by Talia. She agreed with him but still shot him a disapproving look, now was not the time for jokes.

"Yes," hissed some sort of snake faced alien Talia couldn't begin to identify, "Out the airlock, remove the taint, free the station, better for all of us."

"Like hell you are," Dr. Franklin stood up from where he'd been kneeling next to the unconscious woman, the look in his eyes dropped the temperature of the room two degrees, "Nobody is touching my patient. I'm not about to have a lynch mob descending on a woman out of superstition. She hasn't done anything."

"This is not superstition or fear," the Markab waved his hands in the direction of the woman, twisting his arms in derision, "This is truth. Those tainted by the true evils must not be allowed to stay."

"No," Hilder's voice rasped out simmering with a subtle psychic aura of intimidation. Talia had to toss up a mental block to stop her knees from shaking, "Any connections she had with the beast have been severed. And I am most certain that nobody here is foolish enough to attack the beast's victim in front of me. I would consider it an insult," he eyed the Markab in distaste, "A personal insult."

The Markab didn't get a chance to reply.

A deep bellowing cry echoed through the station, piercing and vile. It left the aftertaste of sour milk on Talia's lips and a greasy feeling of wrongness shifting about in the forefront of Talia's psychic senses. It was the same sort of wanton sense of twisted malice she'd found in the minds of serial killers and rabid animals, spiteful and hungering.

The already agitated crowd started to run for all the exits at once, pushing, punching, clawing, and shoving their way away from the unconscious woman.

Shiro yelled into his link, calling Garibaldi and yelling for back-up.

The cry hadn't come from anywhere near Miranda, but in their fear it didn't seem that the fleeing crowd had made that connection. The cry had activated something terrifying and primal ingrained into the sentient psyche, an overpowering urge to flee drawing out all rational thought.

Station security struggled with the rioting mob, desperately trying keep order. A snub-nosed creature grabbed for officer Shiro's side arm, swinging for the Asian man's head with a wild haymaker. He twisted the creature's arm behind its back, smashing the would be attacker to the floor with a resounding thunk of flesh.

"No," Talia all but screamed as Cairn Thross grabbed her by the collar, yanking her forwards and batting the pistol out of her hand. She steeled herself, preparing herself for an agonizing blow from his deadly metal arms.

It never came.

The cybernetic man tossed her behind him, next to the still unconscious Miranda, shielding her with his body. Thross, Daul, and Galut stood in a semi-circle in front of the café, fighting back the tides of the rioting crowd.

"Miss Winters," Inquisitor Hidler's smoldering whisper danced from his lips in frustration, "You must listen to me. There is still time. You must listen to me." A terrified looking Markab made a lunge for the café, trying to get to the exit beyond it. Daul flung him back into the crowd with an errant wave and a burst of psychic energy, "I am trying to help you! Your pride will kill thousands if you do not allow me to aid you."

"No," Talia stood up and smiled, "I don't think so." Loud klaxons echoed resoundingly through the Bazaar as the bulkhead sealed, driving the already unruly crowd into a frenzy. Talia pulled a mask out of her pocket and fixed it over her nose and mouth, the sterile scent of filtered air filling her nostrils.

The clattering noise of metal canisters rolling along the deck plates of the station echoed around the Bazaar, followed soon by the hissing sound of escaping gas. Talia smiled behind her mask at Daul, "In fact Inquisitor I don't think you're going to be doing much of anything at all."

After the Drazi riot Captain Sheridan took precautions to prevent further bloodshed. The Captain could be accused of many things, shortsightedness was not one of them. In the event of another riot station security was authorized to cut off a section of the ship and flood it with a powerful sedative gas that would knock out everyone but the methane breathers.

The Inquisitor's eyes widened and he reached for the grinning skull helm lashed to his belt, "Heretic witch!" Talia lunged for the Inquisitor and grabbed the golden skull. The Inquisitor shoved her in the chest, pushing a burst of telekenetic energy out of his open palm.

He tossed her back ten feet, but did not manage to loosen her grip on the helmet. The grinning golden skull smacked her in the forehead as she collided with the mirror behind the counter of the café. The impact hurt badly, a shard of the mirrored glass cut her ear, but she had won.

The Inquisitor for all his impressive powers was still human, and limited by the human physiology. Even an Inquisitor had to breathe. He was beaten and he knew it.

The Inquisitor took a drunken step towards her, shielding his mouth and nose with a cupped hand. He made a beaconing gesture towards the mask, power surged forth and summoned the golden skull. Talia gripped the shifting helmet tighter and willed it to stay.

The runes and sigils along the helm glowed with a pale blue light and Talia felt a barrier fall into place inches from her body, protecting her from the Inquisitor's grasping presence. Daul looked at the barrier in horror, mortified at her use of his own psychic protections against him.

Daul, furiously bellowed to Cairn in the Imperial langauge. He only managed a few drunken syllables before he fell to the ground muttering wildly to himself, but the Skitarii had gotten the message.

The cyborg, unaffected by the gas, advanced furiously upon Talia. Mechanical tentacles tossed tables and chairs effortlessly as the mechanical man growled out a grating incoherent war cry. The Skitarii leapt over the bar and swiped at her with a mechanical tentacle, just barely missing her neck but tearing the breathing mask from her face.

A woozy and unsettling feeling oozed through her limbs as she gasped in terror. There was only one clear thought in the mind of the Cyborg, only one aim. Cairn was going to kill her. Cairn was going to kill her as painfully as he could.

She held out her hand and screamed, "No." Pushing at him with all her fear and need. The gilded skull flared for a second time, runes flaring with a cool blue light. The cyborg froze in place standing just outside arm's reach, poised to strike but unable to move.

The skull's runes blazed and grew blisteringly hot, but she dared not let go. Whatever else the helmet was, it clearly worked to focus the psychic potential of its bearer. Whereas she had struggled to move a penny with her mind this morning, with the aid of the skull she was able to stop the movement of the cyborg entirely.

It was a glorious sensation of power like she'd never felt before but it could soon be all for nothing. Talia could already feel eyes heavy with sleep and the pharmaceutical taste of cotton was wrapping around her tongue. It would not be long before the gas robbed her of her concentration and the cyborg could redouble his attack.

There had to be a way, there had to be a way out. There was always a way out.

Talia crab walked along the floor behind the bar, keenly aware that the twitching of the cyborg's limbs was becoming less erratic and more deliberate. Her limbs were weak and shambling, only barely listening to her mind. She stuttered and shook her way to the edge of the bar before her control over the cyborg broke entirely.

The cyborg approached her carelessly, almost lazily. He lifted her to her feet and grasped her about the neck with his tentacle, slowly constricting her air passageway. Talia wanted to fling the helmet at Thross' face but only managed a limp flick of her wrist. The helmet dropped to the groud with a deafening clatter.

Talia's lung's burned, pain overwhelming the soporific effects of the gas. She whimpered lamely as the tentacle grew tighter and tighter, cutting off the precious flow of tainted air. She was neither strong enough, fast enough or skilled enough to get away from him. She had no weapons, no allies, no options. She was going to die.

Something wide and pink collided with Cairn's head, smashing him to the floor. His tentacles tore at the skin of her neck, leaving friction burns behind, but slackened enough for her to escape. Cairn screeched in fury and stared at his attacker in disbelief.

It had been Galut who'd attacked him. Galut, the Inquisitor's second bodyguard was giggling giddily to himself pupils dialated from the gas. He muttered to himself in a sing-song voice only half aware of his surroundings, "No more hurt pretty Susan, no more hurt pretty Susan, no more hurt pretty Susan..."

Cairn swore an oath that sounded something like a hissing vyper and reached for Talia a second time. The giant grabbed his tentacles with a grasp of his meaty fist and yanked backwards. The astonished cyborg sailed through the wooden bar and across the café, flying a good twenty feet before colliding into a vending machine.

Cairn collapsed in the wreckage of the vending machine, silent and unmoving. Galut shook his head in sadness and bent down to check on Talia, cooing softly in the Imperial language. He brushed back a stray hair with an elephantine finger, talking in the same gentle tone one might use when talking to an infant.

He smiled at her protectively and ruffled her hair. No longer powered by adrenaline Talia simply allowed herself to be mothered by the hallucinating giant.

Talia felt at ease as the giant picked her up and cradled her in his arms like a baby, grasping the stuffed rabbit he offered her in gratitude. He sat down next to the unconscious imperials cross legged and rocked her, singing a throaty lullaby. Talia melted into the bulging muscles of Galut's arms and fell into a deep slumber.

"Galut do good Susan," the giant muttered feverishly as his eyes drooped and he fell asleep, "Galut do good."

* * *

Under different circumstances Susan might have been honored to be the first Earther on an Imperial vessel.

As it stood, she was not. Heavy iron manacles were bound around her wrists and ankles tied together with heavy links of had nursed hopes that she might escape from Imperial custody by jumping into an escape pod and heading for the station but before she knew it, Susan and her kidnappers were already inside the Imperial ship shoving their way through the varying mass of people wandering about the ship's docking bay.

Yet for all her anger and rage she could not help but look at the interior of the Imperial ship in awe. The swooping gothic architecture and bizarre imperial fashions were more alien than any of the non-aligned worlds she'd seen yet. On the bright side they'd returned her uniform to her before binding her, a small mercy but one she was grateful for. She preferred not to think about how many people had seen her wearing the sheer fabric garment.

Susan shot a murderous glace at Jak as the twitching man excused himself and wandered towards a fat man in rich clothing hanging from a metal frame. The obese figure swung backwards and forwards jovially as Jak walked up to him, kicking his atrophied legs in amusement.

Danzig prodded her onward as she slowed to get a better look at the strange man. The rough callused surface of his right hand squeezed her shoulder, not enough to hurt her but enough that she could not ignore him, "Forwards."

He pointed though an ornate arch into the corridors beyond. Susan sighed and followed Danzig's instructions. Judging by the speed at which Dazig was nodded through customs it seemed likely Danzig's position in the Imperial command structure was higher than he'd advertised. Another secret, another lie, it was hardly a surprise. The Imperials seemed to lie as often as they spoke.

Her curiosity battled her desire to escape as they wandered through the security check-point and into the inner area of the ship.

The strangeness of the ship was exacerbated by the seeming backwardness of the ship's facilities. Twice they'd passed public fountains from which the crew of the ship was drawing water with large steel buckets and carrying them back to the shops. Pubescent teenagers leaning on ornately carved wooden yokes stood around the fountains in no apparent hurry to return with their carved burden, chatting eagerly.

A couple of them shot curious looks in Susan's direction, apparently more interested in Danizg and gazan than in their captive. Judging by the impressed murmurs of interest Danzig held a position of importance and respect on the ship. The olive skinned man positively preened under their gaze, strutting as he walked next to Susan.

The bustling masses of people were awash with flowing linen garments, red pillbox hats, and simple turbans embroidered with the double headed eagle of the Empire, looking positively domestic for all the alien strangeness of the Imperial customs and clothing. An aging crone of a woman with a face that looked like aged leather approached her with a citrusy smelling fruit, offering her wares for only five sliver thrones. Gazan shooed the old crone away muttering, "Five thrones for fruit? The nerve."

Susan was unquestionably their prisoner, but they seemed surprisingly eager to impress her with the history and grandeur of the Endless Bounty. They pointed to landmarks and frescoes as they wandered the winding corridors. "This is the story of the Primarchs, the most glorious warriors among men," they would say or, "Vurnal Sáclair, Captain of the Endless Bounty in the Age of Apostasy. A great man."

It felt less like a kidnapping and more like being forced to go on a trip to a tourist site with her uncles, in spite of the firearms being pointed at her. They referred to historical events within the Empire as though it were not simply common knowledge, they believed it was innate that a human being would recognize them immediately. She struggled to keep up with the various obscure bits of trivia being tossed her way.

When she escaped knowledge of those land marks might mean the difference between freedom and death. "Primarch," "Astropath," "Cultist," "Genestealer," and "Amon Sui" meant nothing yet, but they would. Information was a weapon without peer.

Susan swore as she tripped over the manacles binding her arms and legs. They'd fused the bones of her arms and legs where they'd been broken, but the limbs were still sore and uneasy. The muscles seemed to be unconvinced that they weren't supposed to be locking up in pain when she moved. They'd frozen twice, going numb and sending pins and needles shooting up her spine. A side effect of the stimulant they'd used to resuscitate her combined with the earlier sedative no doubt.

Danzig grabbed her as she overbalanced, steadying her against his shoulder. She noted idly the sensation of being pressed agianst dark man's hard muscled arms was not altogether unpleasant. She still slapped Danzig for his efforts, "Don't touch me you bastard."

Her slap was awkward, hampered by the weight of her manacles. Danzig easily snatched the hanging chains with casual aplomb. A slight red mark covered his cheek as he lifted her arms above her head and stared her in the eyes with businesslike dispassion, "You will not do that again."

Susan's eyes smoldered with defiance but she held her tongue. Getting mouthy with Danzig wouldn't achieve anything other than earning her a beating for her efforts. Her limbs were healed, but freshly so. It would take only minimal effort for the professional soldiers to crack the recently fused bone. If she was going to escape she'd have to wait for them to relax their guard.

A hard bark of laughter echoed from across the street where a handsome man with a devil may care sort of smile observed them with an amused expression on his face. He wore the same crimson and gold silks as Danzig and Gazan, topped with a black pillbox hat, "You always had a unique way of dealing with women Danzig."

Gazan snorted, his lips curving up into a smile that twinkled at the edge of his eyes, "Fadir, you will pardon me if I find your perspectives on women suspect."

"I've yet to hear a complaint from the fairer sex," Fadir said in a tone of falsely wounded pride, his hand pressed over his heart, "You wound me."

"Not as well as the husbands of your conquests would wish to I suspect," Gazan said dryly, grabbing Fadir by the wrist and pulling him into a one armed hug. The two men slapped each others backs in an amiable gesture of greeting.

"Perhaps," Fadir's expression grew more serious, "Gazan you need to go and check on Yonal. He's been having complications."

"I thought that Kerrigan did the surgery to implant his augmentics herself," Gazan's smiled slackened a, the twinkle in his eyes turning to a hard professional gaze, "Medicus Nor sent me no messages indicating that there were aftereffects of the surgery."

Fadir nodded sadly, "Not those sorts of complications. He's been taking the loss of Murak badly."

Danzig's breath caught in his teeth, making a hissing noise somewhere between fury and sorrow, "The boy is dead?"

"We lost a lot of the new recruits in the latest attack of the Amon Sui. Sergei and Maziv have been in a frenzy trying to keep the ship in order. We're down to a hundred and fifty new recruits and two hundred Lionhearts, not including those of us too old or too wounded for active duty," Fadir shook his head, "Sergei will give a more full report when you get back to headquarters."

"Traitors blood," snarled Danzig, "I knew we'd taken losses but I had no idea that we'd lost so many. How is Maziv taking it?"

"The old man?" Fadir barked with laughter, slapping his side and rolling his eyes. He pulled back his upper lip and scrunched up his brow in apparent imitation of the man, speaking in a gruff voice that was whistled with every third syllable, "The Lionhearts don't go and waste time feeling sorry for those of us who have the dignity to have died in service of the house Sáclair. Most men don't have the clarity of dying with a purpose, and the Emperor values men of honor."

Gazan smacked Fadir across the back of younger soldier's head in a playful fashion, "I don't think that old mother would appreciate that you've been imitating him when his back is turned."

"And I'm sure he'd skin you alive if he heard you calling him mother," Fadir's face turned serious again, "The Captain felt it was necessary to keep the specific losses of the Lionhearts secret, we didn't want to send that information to you over an open microwave channel. Seeing as how the damn astropathic servitor decided to go and get itself eaten we haven't had a free moment to get the information to you," Fadir shook his head sadly, "We're a mess sir."

Gazan bit his lip and looked at a clock with six hands pressed into a bronze statue of a double headed eagle, "Danzig I really must get to Yonal. He blamed himself for everything that went wrong in his little brother's life already. Now that Murak is dead I need to go and smack some sense into him before he does something stupid," Gazan pointed to Fadir, "The boy is more than capable of dealing with the witch and I need to get to Yonal before he goes for afternoon prayers. "

Danzig gave Susan an appraising look and nodded, "I could probably handle the witch by myself if it came down to it. She isn't much of a threat, she was just foolish enough to sucker punch the Inquisitor of all people."

Susan bristled at the insult as Fadir swore in fury, "The Alliance woman is a throne cursed psycher? Why are you bringing her onto the ship?"

"Not for you to know Fadir," Danzig said in a tone that left no room for discussion, "We get her where she is going and wait for the Inquisitor. That's it. Anything else is above our pay grade."

Fadir's flirtatious expression turned to one of guarded apprehension. He approached Susan and stood next to her the way one might do with an hungry tiger, anxious and justifiably fearful. He muttered a lyrical prayer to himself in a flowing language that seemed vaguely familiar to Susan, some sort of a ward against evil.

She preferred Fadir's superstitious apprehension to Danzig's outright indifference.

They continued to duck down corridors and into elevators for another thirty minutes. The ship seemed to have been built and rebuilt from the hulls of several different ships, the layout and esthetics of one deck varied greatly from that of another.

Susan tried to memorize the route from the docking bay to their destination but lost track of their path somewhere around a statue of a man driving a sword into a creature vaguely resembing a giant ten legged crab.

The surroundings grew more opulent and well tended as they went higher and higher on the ship. The wide corridors, devoid of the refuse and discarded food wrappers of the lower decks, were full of people wearing rich clothing in a style totally different from that of the lower decks. The upper deck residents were garbed in silk and velvet set with jewels and pearls. They would have looked lavish even within the Centauri Imperial court.

Danzig let out a low whistle when they reached a set of red pressure doors at the end of an obscure side path, "Hamman, are you there?"

The doors opened and the worn face of Hamman popped out, "I need to verify your identity sir."

"Damnit Hamman I have better things to do than this," Swore the broad shouldered man. He massaged his temples as a pillar of marble tipped with a small stone basin rose from the floor, "You know who I am."

"Yes sir I do," Nodded Hamman as he pointed behind Danzig at the high ceiling in the distance, "Those don't."

Susan looked up in the direction Hamman pointed. Shoved into a recesses between the many statues lining the walls of the corridor were a pair of human torsos, servitor constructs. They stared down at the trio in front of the door with glassy, disinterested expressions. Their arms had been replaced with large magazine fed weapons of a caliber Susan didn't care to guess.

Fadir let out a long, low whistle as he pulled the glove off his hand and reached for the thin blade sticking up from the bowl. He pricked his finger, squeezing a thin trickle of blood into it. The bowl sucked the drop into it and chimed in the affirmitive, "That's what Kerrigan meant by a surprise for any visitors. She does 'surprise' pretty damn good."

"A heavy bolter round would be one hell of a surprise," Danzig said as he pricked the tip of his finger, squeezing the blood into the bowl, then spoke in a clear voice, "Corporal Danzig plus one."

As Susan was frog marched into the room she realized that there would be no way of leaving the apartments without being directly in line of sight of the heavy turret weapons pointed at the door.

"Son of a bitch," Susan swore, "That insufferable son of a bitch." They didn't need to keep her in a jail cell. The Inquisitor could give her free run of his apartments, safe in the knowledge that there was no way she would be able to get out of his quarters without getting her head blown off.

Hamman smacked her across the mouth, "You will keep a civil tongue between your teeth or it will be taken away from you witch. It is by the Inquisitor's mercy that you are not simply being tossed out an airlock."

"I'll be glad to return the favor at some point in the future," Susan blinked white flashes of light away from her eyes and was rewarded for her sarcasm with another slap, "Kiss my ass."

Hamman went for a third slap but stopped when Fadir grabbed his wrist. Fadir gave him a stony gaze and spoke in the lyrical language of the Lionhearts. Hamman stiffened in surprise and relented, staring at Susan in shock, "You cannot be serious. She is a heretic at best, there is no way he can be serious about this."

"He is and she will, though she doesn't know it yet," Danzig chuckled dryly, "Damn strange choice for it really."

"Choice for what?" Susan looked back at the corridor, wondering if she would be able to shamble fast enough to avoid the turrets, "What are you going to do with me." A sudden burst of panic overtook her and she struggled against the three men as they dragged her further into the apartment.

Susan whipped the chain binding her wrists up and into Danzig's nose with the wet sound of breaking cartilage. The Lionheart swore loudly but did not let go, "Stop fighting you lunatic woman! We aren't going to hurt you."

Susan readied herself for another swing of the chain at Fadir when a burst of rolling laughter echoed down the hallway, haughty and trenchant. Susan hesitated for a second, granting a chance for to Fadir snag the chain.

An elegant woman with porcelain skin strode forward, the soft crimson velvet creases in her flowing dress crinkling with every clip of her jewel encrusted slippers. Her dress was well tailored, sweeping angles and hanging fabrics highlighting a belly plump with child rather than concealing it.

Two oversized men, Ogryn like Galut, followed her on either side. The Ogryn wore tight breeches, cutaway skirted coats, lacy waistcoats, perfumed white wigs, garlands of flowers, and expressions of supreme suffering on their wide snaggletoothed faces. Each carried a rifle that seemed to be as much a club as a side-arm. Judging by their stance the weapons they carried were clearly the only part of their uniform not making them uncomfortable.

The woman leaned in close to Susan and crossed her arms over a wide belly full with child. She smiled, flashing a mouth full of teeth only slightly paler than her creamy skin. Susan glared back defiantly, confused by the pregnant woman's presence.

"My Lady Sáclair," Danzig stood up straight as board and saluted, a gesture made somewhat comical by his broken nose and the slight trickle of blood rolling down his face, "I had not been informed to expect you."

"I would be very much surprised if you had," the woman idly remarked, reaching out and running an indifferent finger over Susan's uniform, "I'd been hoping to have a conversation with the Inquisitor. Was his personal transport not the one you arrived on?"

"It was madam, but the Inquisitor is still on the station," Danzig said in the same tone Susan might have used to address President Clark, "To my knowledge he will return before the day's end."

The woman grunted in incredulity, "So you say. Though if the slave markets in Alliance space have such stock as this I can hardly blame him for his tardiness. He does have some good taste after all."

Susan's blood boiled and she spat in the woman's face, "I'm no one's slave you pompous bitch."

Danzig turned on her, his hand raised to strike but stopped at a gesture and a word from the woman. She wiped the spittle away from her face with a lace handkerchief, something like a smile playing at the edge of her lips, "You are a fiery one, aren't you? No, not a slave. I recognize you Lieutenant Commander. But Hilder wouldn't be taking you against your will if he did not have a purpose for you. Not when it risks all that he has labored to build these past months. Not when killing you would be so much easier."

"I'm not easy to kill," Susan yanked her arms down and nearly dislodged the chain from Fadir's grip. Hamman shot her a murderous glance but did not slap her.

"Oh I think I'm going to like you," tittered the Lady Sáclair, her full lips puckered in thought. Cool eyes roved over her rumpled uniform and manacled hands, taking the measure of her, "I suppose it's too much to hope that the Inquisitor has taken a romantic interest. Hilder would have to relax for more than ten seconds to do that."

Susan tried not to be ill at the idea of the Inquisitor having romantic intentions for her. The idea of the Inquisitor having romantic intentions for anyone was alarming enough without involving her. If he wished to force himself upon her she wasn't sure if she'd be able to stop him, "I'd rather die."

"Let's not go wishing more troubles upon ourself yet, shall we? The Emperor gives enough without asking for more." The woman looked up at Danzig and spoke in a voice of authority, "Colonel Danzig. Are you allowed to speak about the intentions he has for this woman with her."

"No mam," Danzig shook his head once. Susan nodded she'd assumed as much.

"Has he given orders not to speak of it to my husband," The woman, apparently the wife of the ship's captain quirked an eyebrow. Susan tried to recall the dossier she'd been compiling on the ship. Annabelle, yes that had been the woman's name. Annabelle, the Lady Sáclair.

"If he had I wouldn't obey them my lady," Danzig smiled, "But he has ordered me not to speak of them with anyone else in the command structure of lesser status."

The Lady laughed a feline laugh, almost a purr, "Then as my husband's equal and proxy I request you inform me." Susan's breath caught in her throat.

The Lady Sáclair was defying the Inquisitor, maybe even trying to sabotage the Inquisitor's plans. The Inquisitor's authority within the Empire was not as absolute as he'd represented it to Captain Sheridan, even on his own ship.

"Mam," the Lionheart's eyes widened in vexation, his conflicting oaths of loyalty warring within his head, "I don't know if..."

"If what?" Asked the Lady. She hadn't raised her voice but Danzig hopped as though she'd flung a pot of scalding water in his face, "Your oath of Loyalty is to my husband, not to Hilder. I am his wife and equal on this ship. You will tell me what I want to know. Now."

"Yes," Danzig said, his voice resolute, "Of course mam."

"Good," The Lady caressed a curl of Susan's fiery red locks that had come loose in the fight, bright orange seeming almost phosphorescent against the inhuman pallor of the Lady's flesh. An unreadable expression played across her face, "Now why does the Inquisitor want her?"

"Yes mam," He cleared his throat and slapped a firm hand on Susan's shoulder. Her knees buckled, "Allow me to present to you Miss Susan Ivanova, newest apprentice to Inquisitor Daul Hilder."

Susan's jaw dropped, "You have got to be kidding me."

* * *

Mark was nervous, and not undeservingly so. Mark was a criminal, and a dangerous one at that, though he was hesitant to think of himself that way. The warrants on him had no doubt gotten to Babylon Fiv blank writs of arrest demanding that he be brought in dead or alive. Mark preferred dead.

Death was preferable to what the Psi Corps would do to him. The couldn't do anything to him once he was dead.

He'd entered the Psi Corps as a child, taken from his parents at age seven. His memories of his parents were vague, but he remembered that they hadn't fought the government officials who'd come to take him away. They'd believed he was being given an opportunity beyond his wildest dreams, a chance at a real future. They thought it was a great choice.

It didn't make him hate them less for giving him up.

They'd raised him much in the way that they claimed they would for the first ten years or so, at least till his eighteenth birthday when he started to manifest telekinesis. It was at that point that he'd been slated for a special project, one of the many unofficial projects done by the Psi Corps.

They'd done things to him, things that he preferred not to remember, things that still gave him nightmares. He'd escaped by the skin of his teeth with the aid of the Underground Railroad, sneaking to the proxima colony via mars for a number of months before fleeting for the Babylon Station. It was one of the few ports where one could reach alien territories that would not extradite to the Earth Alliance.

It was a safe haven for the Underground Railroad, one of the few military installations without its own dedicated Psi Corps presence. About two dozen rogue telepaths would be on station at any given time. They had to be careful, staying out of view and under the radar.

They could only risk sending people into alien space one or two at a time, careful not to draw the notice of immigration. A human arriving on an Earth Force transport was relatively unremarkable, a human leaving on an alien transport was odd. A dozen humans leaving on a transport would draw notice.

They did not wish to draw notice. However somebody was causing psychic pandemonium on station. After the psychic scream rocked the ship Mark headed for the meeting place. No message needed to be sent.

There was already a small crowd of people in the tiny brown sector apartment when he entered. Nobody wasted time with small talk or greetings when he entered the room, few even bothered to look. They'd all sensed his arrival long before he pushed the door open.

Small talk would have been wasted anyway. For safety's sake they exchanged neither names nor personal information. Psychic exchanges of information were often more practical anyway. An ID could be faked, a mind couldn't.

The room resounded with silence as the telepaths exchanged frenzied snippets of information with each other. Something had attacked the station. The Captain had arrested the Imperial Inquisitor. The Imperial Inquisitor had fought a demon and lost. Talia Winters had fought the Inquisitor and won. The conflicting thoughts thundered deafeningly in his head contesting the silent shifting of bodies in the room.

"Enough! We know nothing for sure," Slurred the voice of the de-facto leader of the Underground Railroad, a hunched crone of a man misshapen from the abuses he'd suffered at the orders of the Psi Corps, "Rumors will get us nowhere but into a panic. Getting into a panic will get us caught."

"And getting caught will get us killed," muttered Mark idly to himself, "Which would be bad." The man next to Mark shivered and scratched at his chest, groaning in pain. The poor bastard probably was too afraid to go to the med-center for fear that someone would back track his medical records. They'd lost a man to a ruptured appendix for that very reason last month.

The crowd silently murmured to each other psychically, a shifting morass of fear and anticipation. The hunch-back shouted again in his incoherent mess of slurs, "Enough! We are safe. The Psi Corps has yet to break the Mars cell. We have at least a month before they catch on to us if they ever do. We'll be in Minbari space by then."

The irony of fleeing to Minbar in search of safety was not lost on Mark. He could still remember huddling in a bunker on Earth at the Battle for the Line. Not that long ago the Minbari were the closest thing to Satan he could think of, a post now deservingly occupied by one Alfred Bester.

The Psi Core was hell on Earth.

The crisp uniformity and institutional disinfected sterility that the public was privy to was only a mask over the cankerous purulence of the Psi Cpors' true purposes. God the things the Psi Corps had done to them were unholy, there was no other word for it. Selective breeding, forced abortions, murder, rape, it was a virtual laundry list of every inhuman and unforgivable act that could be committed.

And nobody knew about it. Obfuscation and misdirection were the weapons of the Psi Corps, and they were nothing if not efficient. Nobody believed the ravings of a couple rogue telepaths. Nobody really wanted to. Telepaths were frightening and the Psi Corps allowed normal people to feel protected.

People would sacrifice a lot for that sense of protection. His parents had sacrificed him after all.

Sacrifice, god but he was sick of having to hear that word. Everything was sacrifice. For all that he valued his freedom the pursuit of it was astonishingly limiting. A sentiment that all the pilgrims on the underground railroad felt with equal measure.

"When do we leave?" asked a young girl in pigtails eagerly her face full of unbridled hope. She was only thirteen but would easily be a P-9 when she grew into her full potential. It was probably why the Psi Corps wanted to breed her early.

The hunchback smiled, a gruesome gesture on his twisted features but his good will shone from his mind, "Children will be the first to go. Less than a week for you." The girl smiled and giggled as he pinched her cheek, "Less than a month for us all. We will all be free soon."

The tension in the room dropped drastically and the psychic muttering lulled to dull idle whispering. The prospect of freedom was enough to calm anyone. God bless those bone heads, he would kiss the first one he saw once he got to Minbar. Freedom was a glorious idea.

"Now," Slurred the hunchback, "Go back to your quarters, get some food, get some rest, and be ready for soon it is time. Soon it will be time to go."

The man next to Mark coughed again, blood spurting out of his mouth and nose. Mark cried out without meaning to, "Damnit!"

A dark skinned P6 woman rushed over to the man with a towel, wiping off his face and nose. The ill man's pale and clammy skin was covered in great beads of sweat. He shivered and shook convulsively, "We need to get him to a doctor!"

"No," hissed a P4 with a strong german accent, "If ve do zat den ve vill be caught." Mark wanted to disagree with the man but couldn't. There were too many surgically implanted markers in all members of the Psi Corps to make going to a doctor entirely safe. All it would take was one doctor back-tracking serial numbers in order to get medical records and they'd all be up the creek.

"We can't let him die," cried the young P9 as she yanked frustratedly at her pig tails. Damn the Psi Corps to hell a child shouldn't be forced to make this sort of a decision, "He just can't die."

"No," hissed a P11 woman of vaguely English accent in a green dress. Her face squirmed between warring expressions of pity and fear, "If he dies he dies but we cannot risk all of us for him."

"We don't have to," the hunch back shook his head. He approached the ill man warily, pulling his shirt over his mouth as he examined the black veins of the man's neck, "I know of a doctor who doesn't ask questions. He can be trusted."

"How can you know," hissed the P11 woman in the green dress. She grabbed the hunchback's arm, nails biting at the man's skin as her hands flexed in hysteria, "How can you be sure?"

"I am," said the hunch-back in a voice indicating that he considered the matter to be closed. He brushed the woman's hand away dismissively, "I'll contact him and have him down here to help... who is that?" The hunch back hysteria and stared at the man vomiting up blood, "I've never seen him before. Who is that?"

The man was a stranger. How in the hell had a stranger gotten into their meeting?

Mark backed away in horror as the man stood up, blood still seeping from the man's every orifice and staining his clothing. His face had elongated unnaturally and his skin had pinched into and odd shape, bilious shadow seeping from his shirt and pants.

"Who in the hell are you?" Mark snarled as he pulled out his PPG, "What in the hell are you?"

The man shifted on the balls of his feet and his skin stretched and shifted like an ill-fitting suit, twisting and bursting as horns and claws protruded from where they'd been concealed beneath. The room filled with a malevolent hungering presence.

The hunchback bellowed, "Run," though it hardly needed to be said. As the man's head burst like a ripe mellon revealing a cruel reptilian face beneath the collected telepaths fled. The creature swiped a fist faster than Mark could see, shoving it's hand into the torso of the german telepath and tearing his heart and lungs out of his body without ever breaking the flesh.

The reptilian equine face shimmered and disappeared into a vague shadowy nothingness. The giant body of the creature rippled and shifted as it reached into the body again and again, pulling out hunks of dripping creature swallowed the organs greedily, ignoring the deluge of PPG shots Mark fired at it as though they were the stinging of bees.

And then he realized what was truly unnerving him. It wasn't only flesh the creature grabbed. There was a vague bluish, silvery something that came up with every handful of meat. With every handful the German man's mind got smaller and weaker, robbing him of everything except the pain.

God almighty it was eating the german psychic's soul.

Mark lashed at the creature with his mind in desperation, forcing his hate into a blade of telepathic energy. The creature dropped a handful of man flesh, snarling in indignant fury. It turned three sets of horrid misshapen eyes on him, glowing in the shadowy dark, and spoke in a voice like rotten food and the buzzing of insects, "Mine."

Mark screamed as the creature charged him, talon tipped fingers tearing through his flesh without ever leaving a mark. The creature drove its face into Mark's chest, feeding. As Mark felt the creature tearing his intestines from his torso he put the PPG up to his temple and pulled the trigger.

It was a pity he wouldn't see Minbar.

* * *

The Inquisitor jerked fitfully in his sleep, plagued by nightmares. Once or twice he'd made a strangled sound halfway between a cry and a yell of anguish. Michael didn't even want to begin to imagine what the Inquisitor had gone through that could make a man's back arch like that in his sleep.

Protocol dictated that he administer a sedative to a prisoner suffering from severe night terrors, but he couldn't do that without first getting a doctor down to examine the Inquisitor. And he couldn't do that without stomping over about ten different treaties. He could, and had, anministered psychic supressants. That at least was his right.

He wasn't even sure if legally he could hold the Inquisitor once he woke up, technically speaking as a duly appointed representative in the League of Non-aligned worlds he was granted diplomatic immunity from anything that wasn't a war crime or covered under an extradition treaty.

At the moment he was only holding the Ambassador under a loophole stating that a representative of the Non-aligned worlds may be taken into protective custody in the event that they were incapacitated. As the Inqusiitor had been incapacitated in the process of quelling a riot it was legal, but only thinly so. Hopefully it would give Captain Sheridan enough time to act.

And someone would have to act soon. The Babylon 5 brig lacked the capacity to arrest everyone involved in the riot so they'd been forced to limit themselves to arresting the Imperials and a single Markab the only ones that Officer Shiro had been able to identify as instigating the riot.

"He exorcized a demon," Michael watched the man twitch in sleep, "As in horns, tail, and pitchfork?"

"He says he exorcized a demon," Officer Shiro said in an unconvinced tone, "But he certainly did something. I don't know if you heard it where you were..."

"I did," Michael cut him off, rolling his eyes to the sky, "Everyone did. You know that. Christ Shiro, nobody's been talking about anything else."

Shiro grunted noncommittally, "We putting extra security on the Imperial docking bay? We don't want any of the Imperials getting funny ideas about storming the bring."

"For who?" Michael snorted, "The Imperials bolted when they heard... whatever that was. Zack says they left half a ton of grain behind but they just got on their ships and left like they thought the devil himself was chasing them."

Shiro's expression turned blank, "Maybe he was."

"You have something to say Shiro?" Shiro was not a particularly imaginative or superstitious man. If he was spooked you could bet there was a damn good reason.

The asian man sighed, and spoke in an uncomfortable tone. Each syllable squeezed past his teeth with a generous allowance of skepticism, "He saw something sir. Something in her head, the girl from the ship that is. He saw it and he tore it out. I don't know if it was a demon, but it wasn't friendly."

Michael nodded once, leaning on the door and starting through the small window, "Maybe. The Captain will be down in about an hour to sort this mess out. In the meanwhile I want everyone on duty. As of now anyone on vacation has their leave canceled."

Shiro groaned, no doubt having realized that Michael meant for his subordinate the be the one to actually make the announcement, "They aren't going to like that."

"I'll authorize double overtime," Michael chewed his lip, pensive. Something had happened earlier in the day. Something that without a doubt involved the Inquisitor, intimately, "Somethings not right Shiro. Something's very not right."

"You think there's a demon on station?" Shiro said in a mocking tone that only slightly coverd his unease. He put his hands on either side of his head in a crude imitation of devil horns.

Michael swatted his subordinate's hands down in consternation. Honestly, what was Shiro thinking? Michael was the one who was supposed to be cracking wise, "It doesn't have to be a demon to be something nasty Shiro. There's plenty of nasty things in the universe without demons."

The Inquisitor yelled out a pained cry, whimpering in his own language. Shiro sighed, "There's definitely something that's messing with this guy's head."

"Life," Michael tried not to think too hard about his own nightmares as the Inquisitor thrashed in his bed, "Life is more than enough to mess with anyone." He nearly jumped out of his own skin when his link went off, buzzing a with a tinny whistle.

He tapped it twice, "This is Garibaldi, what's up?"

"Mr. Garibaldi get up to my office," said Sheridan in a less than confabulatory manner. The man's usual cool was starting to crack, and a twinge of genuine anger was evident in the word, "Now."

"Time to face the music," Michael sighted and walked out of the brig.

* * *

Sørian was a mess.

Every part of his body ached and his arm, still twisted at an unnatural angle, flopped against his side with every step. The physical pain of his arm was far less than the indignity of someone of his status, a devotee of the Keeper of Secrets, being reduced to shambling down access corridors in refuse covered clothing.

"I'll kill the bastard, bring him back to life, and kill him again," he hissed, teeth clenching so hard they were well in danger of cracking. He picked a bit of vegetable peel from his sleeve and tossed it to the side with effortless contempt. The rotted garbage left green stains of slime on his fingers, "Revolting."

He shuffled up a slap-shod staircase that had clearly been a recent construction done in the aftermath of the Belzafest assault, sturdy but inelegant. His feet, bloody and shoeless, protested the indignity of walking up the metal grating. Hooked metal ridges, designed to allow the heavy booted crewmen better footing, were murder on the soft flesh of his feet.

A trail of bloody footprints trailed behind him. A more than sufficient trail for even the dimmest of security officers to catch wind of, if they were to find it. And he was walking towards the most likely area they'd be searching.

Sørian probably shouldn't have gone back to the site of the explosion, station security was doubtlessly fighting the fires and sifting through the rubble, but his instincts were telling him that he needed to return.

He'd learned to trust his instincts, twisted though they may be. His devotions to the dark gods granted him with bursts of insight at times, brief flashes of what he ought to do. And they were telling him unequivocally that he ought to return. Though for what reason he could not even hope to predict.

So he hobbled onwards, listening to the lingering touches of awareness. Dark caresses of the god of decadence guided him, muffled beaconing whispers of lust. Like all his messages from the beyond as of late they were pale shadows of the powers he was accustomed to. The vague smell of honeyed milk and rosewater perfume tugged at his tongue, tantalizing him towards the god's purpose.

Sørian attached his mind to that sense of purpose, ignoring the pain and the shame. There was no shame he would not bear for power. The gods valued dedication and devotion above all else, their fickle punishments were only for the undevoted and the unworthy.

Sørian was neither. In fact so dedicated was he to his goal that he did not hear the voice the first, second, or even third time someone called out "Sir" to get his attention. It was only on the fourth attempt that Sørian's mind was drawn away from his task and he focused on the voice.

A squat man with a ruddy face and a nose covered in bulbous growths indicative of excessive drink was staring at him in shock. His jaw hung open and a box of tools lay at his feet, forgotten, "By the throne man! What happened?"

Sørian was too tired and hurt to think up an appropriate lie so he settled on the truth, "The Amon Sui bombed the sector I was in."

The man's burned half-lips pulled back in disgust, revealing cancerously black gums caked from decades of exposure to oil and promethium. He slapped his knee in disgust and made the sign of the Aquilla, "Damned nobles and their damned infighting, making it so that an honest man can't even ply his trade."

Sørian wobbled, steadying himself with his hand on the wall. Stopping had been a mistake. All the blood loss and pain seemed to catch him in an instant. His legs buckled and he became instantly aware that he'd lost feeling in his feet.

The ugly man in the torn smock grabbed him with soot stained hands and pulled out a filthy kerchief that smelled of machine lubricant. Sørian noted with no small amount of chagrin that it was still cleaner than the patches of flesh that the ugly man was wiping rubbish off of.

"I swear it don't matter which of them wins," clucked the ugly man, "Sáclair or the Amon, I just wish whoever was going to win could get on with it so the rest of us could get on with our lives. It don't matter much to me who's running the ship so long as there aint no damned bombs going off."

He clucked his tongue, "And that damned Inquisitor's as much a menace as anyone, dragging us into fights what we got no buisness in fighting. He'll bring all mess of nasty creatures to this ship you mark my words. Xenos and Demons and Throne only knows what else. It's enough to make you turn blue."

Sørian started giggling. He hadn't meant to but the whole situation was just to absurd for him. He slumped against the wall, falling to the floor laughing like a madman at the absurdity of it all. The ugly man, apparently aware that he was falling into shock, shook him by the shoulder and looked him in the face with piggish grey eyes, "Don't you go dying on me boy! You don't get to give those bastards that satisfaction."

He hefted Sørian over his shoulders, "Come on then boy! We're going to get you to someone what can help you. I know a good medicus."

"No," hissed Sørian fearfully. If he were to be taken to a medicus there would be inconvenient questions. A medicus would be required to report his injuries to security, and even with bribes there would be no guarantee that the medicus would not report him at a later date under Osma's coercion.

"I won't be having you dying on my watch boy," clucked the old man as they walked the empty blackness of the ships access corridors, "Too much dying lately."

A plan formed in the back of his mind as Sørian fumbled at his belt with his good hand, feeling for a familiar ivory hilt. The ritual magic of chaos did not truly require the carefully prepared runes and preparations used by most practitioners. In theory a focused effort of will would be sufficient, however in making treaties with the dark gods such methods of focus were vastly preferable.

To the dark gods, granting a boon never came without a price. The trick was in directing such a price towards another. One took such precautions to prevent the fickle gods from making "slight" deviations from the caster's will and turning the caster into a semi-sentient mutated mass of a monster.

Given his need it was worth the risk.

Focusing his mind on the sigils and rules that he would have carved into the mans flesh under normal circumstances, Sørian raised the blade and drove it between the ugly man's floating ribs. The man let out an angry whispering cry as the blade pierced his lung, collapsing to the ground dead.

Sørian ignored the pain as they fell to the ground, blasphemous words at his lips. The sour syllables ground past his teeth, sending a sense of electricity up his spine. They were not from any language spoken by men or xenos, not for a thousand years.

They were words of unholy power, dark and terrible.

The wound where the blade cut into the man's flesh parted a liquid seeped out that wasn't blood. It was too pink for human blood and smelled more like aged wine, though it still smelled as sour. Sørian pulled out the blade and drank the seeping blood. The scent and flavor was only an illusion, he could still taste the foul earthy taste of copper beneath it. It was a weak illusion but it was enough to complete the ritual.

His arm popped back into place and the flesh knit together in front of his eyes. Sørian fed hungrily at the man's life blood and with it healed his own wounds. Inch by inch, second by second he restored his body to wellness.

The ugly man let out betrayed gurgles of disbelief as the life slowly died from the his eyes. Sørian drank, and drank, and drank glad for the man's strength. The was a time where Sørian would have regretted sacrificing another human being in the name of his own survival but that time was long gone.

It was a shame he had to die, Sørian did not wish him ill, but he couldn't allow anything to get in the way of his revenge.

Sørian stood up, twisting the stiffness out of his neck with a satisfying series of pops. Death only made the old man slightly less attractive, thought Sørian. The man's smock hung in a far more flattering way over the recently mummified flesh of the dead.

Sørian's own clothing too was in a far better sate then they had been only moments ago. Far from being stained with the blood and detris, his robes were as fresh and clean as they'd ever been.

"A fitting boon," chuckled Sørian as he rand his fingers through his own hair. The remains of what had once been trash fell to the ground in a shower of powdered gold dust.

Sørian picked up the man's corpse and tossed it down the trash chute. It would likely be covered with the collected debris of thousands long before anyone bothered to check it, at which point he should be long gone. The mans body thudded heavily as it fell through the chute, the metal toes of the corpse's boots echoing off the sides.

As he walked away, following the deep intuitive sense of need he realized idly that he hadn't even bothered to ask the man's name. It was just as well he supposed. One did not want to know the name of one's food.

* * *

Montgomery's glibness about the whole situation was comforting. Zack hadn't ever been a particularly religious person but there was something distinctly disconcerting about being on a hunt for demons. Montgomery had been raised in a strict Catholic family his entire childhood and gone to Catholic school for proper religious instruction, ironically the perfect breeding ground for an atheist.

And boy was Montgomery an athiest.

"Religion," groaned Montgomery as he ducked under one of the various curtains the denizens of brown sector were so fond of hanging from the ceiling for privacy. A squat something with bug eyes and a long proboscis of a nose hissed, tittering angrily at having been disturbed while eating, "Yeah, yeah same to you," he looked back towards Zack, "There's nothing to it but a bunch of superstition and worries."

"I dunno man," Zack clicked his tongue off his teeth as he eyed a particularly shifty looking pair of Golians that were looking too chummy with one of N'Grath's underlings, a particularly ugly oversized alien thug with a thick horn. The insectoid crime lord of Babylon 5 had been curiously quiet in the past couple months, uncharacteristically so considering Garibaldi's absence, "Something sure made one heck of a noise. And if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and lets loose scary freaking screams like a duck it might be a demon."

"I heard a weird noise, sure," Montgomery raised a finger to his temple, "But that doesn't mean that I've lost my mind. "

"What's that supposed to mean?" Zach checked his watch. It would be another three hours of this drudgery before he got to leave brown sector, "Dumb it down for us mere mortals okay?"

"If you hear hoofbeats its better to think horse than zebra," Montgomery waved off Zach's credulity, "The Imperials have an agenda. And by all accounts they're smart. Hell you've seen ISN the same as me."

Zack had. ISN couldn't get enough of speculating about the origins and culture of the Empire. It was largely conjecture and speculation at this point, of course. Supposedly they'd be doing some sort of in depth report on the information that the Earth Alliance had been provided by the Inquisitor once it passed through the senate. But not having actual facts wasn't about to stop ISN.

"Man you're smarter than that," Zack laughed, "Have you seen a reporter on station anywhere near the Inquisitor and his crew? Heck have you seen one on the station at all? The chief would have had a fit if one of them snuck in without him knowing."

"Fair enough," Montgomery shrugged, "But that doesn't mean they aren't on to something. The Inquisitor has an agenda, same as anyone else. And it doesn't seem beyond them to have the ability to do something that looks like a demon attack. This is a society that uses re-animated corpses for cargo loaders."

"I'm not looking forward to having more to do with the Imperials in the future," Zack admitted thinking of the floating skulls, "The whole recycled people thing is just a bit to icky for me."

Montgomery chucked, "Dunno, I sure as hell like their dress code."

"She was a corpse," Zack's face twisted up in disgust, "Do we really have to talk about it still?"

Zach tired to focus on what it was about the corpse that made him feel so uneasy, but it wouldn't come to him. He was saved having to explain the confusing mess of feelings that the servitor made him feel by the approach of N'Grath's underling.

The alien towered over the two security guards but made no overt hostile motions. Zack made sure his hand rested on the handle of his pistol just in case. N'Grath was dangerous, his employees more so. More than one member of station security had simply "disappeared" over the years. It was a safe bet N'Grath had a hand involved in every one.

"My employer has information that you require," the thug said in a shrill voice that sounded like he'd spent most of his early life consuming helium. His expression clearly indicated he was used to being obeyed in spite it.

"Yeah I'll bet," snorted Zack. N'Grath often offered dubious information at premium prices but never to security. He might very well triple the price out of pure spite, "We aren't buying."

"Good, he isn't selling," snarled the giant in his girlish soprano, "N'Grath doesn't like murder. It's bad for business. Last time I checked you were on board for that as well."

Zack sobered instantly, shooting a look of alarm to Montgomery, "Why hasn't it been reported to security?"

The giant shot a withering look at Zack and said, in the sort of voice one might use with the mentally handicapped, "That is what I'm doing right now."

"Ah," Zack replied lamely, "I guess you are."

Montgomery, substantially more coherent under the circumstances asked the obvious question, "Where is the murder?"

"Not here," the thug offered unhelpfully before turning his back on them and walking away, clearly intending for the two of them to follow. Montgomery shrugged and fell into step after the alien. Zack double tapped the locator beacon on his belt to activate it and followed suit.

"Allan and Montgomery deviating from set patrols to investigate a potential disturbance," he muttered into his link, "We are proceeding with caution."

"Copy," echoed the on duty officer, "Over and out."

Montgomery whispered worriedly to Zack, "Don't look now, but tiny seems to have brothers and sisters."

A trio of horned aliens, much like the one guiding Zack and Montgomery were walking behind them at a relaxed pace, not so fast that they would be obvious in the crowd and not so slowly that they could be mistaken for doing anything other than following them.

The alien crime lord went out of his way to make sure that he wasn't remotely connected to anything on station. He was too smart for that, too dedicated to the collection of power. He was certainly too smart to try an ambush as ham fisted as asking two security officers to walk into a dark room.

N'Grath had to know that Zack already reported in. So what was the point in making it that obvious? "They're bodyguards," Zach blinked in incredulity and whispered to himself, "N'Grath has given us bodyguards."

The alien's head jerked. It was a subtle motion but enough to show Zack his guess was on the mark. Something had N'Grath spooked enough that he needed Garibaldi's help. This was a public declaration of support for Garibaldi's investigations. And he clearly meant for Garibaldi to know it.

"This can't be good," Montgomery nodded to the entrance of a brown sector apartment complex. Another five muscular bruisers of various species were standing out front, looking distinctly green at the gills.

"Nope," Agreed Zach as he stared at a Yolu with an expression of outright horror on its face slumped next to the door with his head between its knees, heaving and trying to keep from vomiting, "Not good at all."

Zack walked through the door and into hell itself. Montgomery swore and ran outside into the corridor where he vomited behind a support beam. Zack nearly joined him but managed, just barely, to keep his stomach in check in spite of the veritable olfactory assault.

Tiny and the other bruisers had done a decent job of keeping the crime scene, though it was unclear what there actually was to preserve. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor were covered in blood and organs. Some sick bastard positioned the severed limbs of eight bodies into an eight pointed star, with a head at each point.

Zack inhaled in shock, slate air tasting of soured blood and regret filling his mouth and nose. The pungent coppery taste of blood was in the very air itself, a bitter sanguinary sorrowful morass. "Focus Zack," he scrunched his eyes shut and shoved the fear into the back of his mind muttering under his breath, "Getting scared won't help anyone. Focus."

He opened his eyes, searching for clues. Few were forthcoming under the circumstances. They seemed to be human but it was hard to tell with all the blood. God was there really that much blood in a human body? It seemed impossible that a human could actually have that much blood. Was there that much hot, sticky, horrible... Zack swallowed.

This wasn't helping. He needed to focus on doing something. Running back to his quarters, crawling under the bed, and crying for a few days seemed like a great option.

But he didn't do that. He didn't run. He didn't cry. He didn't even swear. He was just too damn afraid to do that. No, what he did was pull out his note-pad and start writing down everything he saw. Writing was good. When he wrote it let him distill the situation down to its individual facts. And none of the facts were as scary as the whole.

If he focused on the small details while not considering the whole picture it would let him keep control of the situation. He cleared his throat and looked at Tiny, "Who were they?"

Tiny sighed as he looked at the bodies, his morose soprano seemed less comical under the circumstances, "We aren't really sure. The apartment is rented by the hour. And the guy who rents it is that one," he pointed to the third point in the start, "We're pretty sure he was the first victim... well that or the last."

"Why do you say that?" Zack vaguely recognized the man. He could swear that he'd seem him in Dr. Franklin's clinic not long ago, though anything Franklin had spoken with him about was probably covered under doctor-patient privilege.

"Rented by the hour remember? Mark collected half his fee before and half his fee after," the thug clicked his talon tipped fingers on the horn protruding from his head, a nervous grooming gesture, "The people who rented space from Mark paid extra for... considerations. Mark's clients were very protective of their privacy."

Criminals then, or at least people engaging in questionable activities. Mark, the owner, would have been smart enough to know not to risk wandering in on dust dealers or extortionists. Or worse, if the sloping drain at the center of the room was any indication.

"The killer wanted us to see this. Or he knew someone would see it and didn't care. Disposing of a body from this room would be easy," Zack said to nobody in particular. Tiny stood still, his face betraying no hint of comprehension or interest. Zack rolled his eyes, "Montgomery you alright?"

The other officer had returned to the scene of the crime, pale faced and covered in small flecks of his own sick. Montgomery stared at the star in utter contempt, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like scripture. Zack snapped his fingers in front of Montgomery's face, "Montgomery! Man are you okay?"

"I'm... fine," Montgomery wiped his lips on his right sleeve, "I should be okay... well not okay. You know what I mean."

Zack did. It seemed unlikely anything else would feel alright until they'd caught the sicko who'd murdered these people and put him behind bars. Zack looked at tiny, "Ok, Tiny. What in the hell happened here?"

Tiny scrunched his face up in what could have been either contemplation or agony, brows furrowed about a protuberant horn. Thinking didn't seem to be a skill Tiny was often called upon to do, "Off the record?"

"Sure," Zack wouldn't be able to use anything that Tiny said as evidence but Tiny clearly wasn't planning on providing him anything useful otherwise, "Off the record."

"Off the record there is something scaring the crap out of everyone in brown sector. Nobody's seen it but we know it's there," Tiny looked over his shoulder, dark eyes narrowed in concentration. No, not concentration, fear. Tiny, all three hundred pounds of him, was terrified. The giant lowered his voice as though he were afraid he might be heard speaking, "We can hear it whispering."

"We all heard the scream," Zack sighed, "I can assure you that we can guarantee there is nothing to worry about, the Inquisitor has been arrested."

"Don't you give me any useless lines," Tiny pointed at the pile of corpses his voice raised in anger, "About there being nothing to worry about. These people didn't kill themselves."

Zack's retort was cut off by the excited voice of Montgomery. The officer had wandered though the charnel on tip toe, doing his best not to disturb the remains, "Hey Allan! There's something in the middle of the circle of bodies."

Zack looked back at tiny, "Has anyone been in here other than us?"

"N'Gath made it clear to us that we were to keep everything untouched for you. He didn't want evidence going astray. You might get the wrong idea about his own legitimate business interests," Tiny said, straight faced. , "We haven't touched or moved anything."

Zack stifled a pithy retort. No doubt N'Gath had his men remove anything that could have traced back to the crime boss, though it seemed unlikely anyone could have walked into the circle without leaving finger prints. But not all N'Gaths enfocers had fingers.

Montgomery made a surprised noise.

"What is it Montgomery?" Zack strained to see what the other officer was looking at. There was a faint glimmer of gold beneath the blood and offal in the center of the grim tableau. Montgomery pulled a set of latex gloves off his belt and reached down, pulling up a golden coin and palming it in his hand.

"Dunno," Montgomery wiped it off with his hand, "It's gold... old too by the look of it, real old. There's something written on it. I can just barely read it." He rubbed at the coin vigorously with his thumb, "It's covered in too much blood I just need to... to wipe it off."

"Montgomery bag the coin and leave it for the forensics computer," Zack tasted the foetid taste of meal again and wretched slightly. He was fast reaching his limits for how long he could stand being in the room, "Let's get out of here and get some backup."

Montgomery continued rubbing the coin aggressively, entirely unimpressed by Zack's suggestion, "Sir it's already coming off, just give me another second."

"Montgomery I want to get the heck out of this freak show," Zack walked over to Montgomery and grabbed him by the shoulder, "We need to go."

"No!" Montgomery slapped Zack's hand away, "I need to figure this out."

"Woah," Zack pulled back in shock, hand's raised in a placating way, "Get a hold of yourself Montgomery, we aren't going to solve this right this second. We're too emotional. Just take a step back and relax, okay?"

Montgomery did quite the opposite, clutching the coin within his clenched fist as though he feared it might disappear at any moment and moving to the center of the circle, "I see what this is! It's a set up. You're with N'Gath! You're going to kill me and steal what's mine!"

Zack stared into Montgomery's wide, blood-shot eyes in shock and confusion. What in the heck just happened? Zack tried walking towards Montgomery and asking, "Man what in the heck are you talking about?" but only got so far as "Man what ar-" before Montgomery pulled out his PPG and pointed it at Zack's head.

"I see through you and your lies," Montgomery leered with hateful eyes that had no place on the kind man's face. His hand shook, his finger already on the trigger. The soft low whine of charging power reverberated in the crime scene, portentous and foreboding.

"Put down the gun Montgomery," Zack tried his best to comprehend what was going on while sharing a baffled look with Tiny, "We can talk about this. What is going on?"

"The time for talking is long past," Montgomery laughed. It was high and cruel, wholly unlike Montgomery. Montgomery had an earthy laugh that almost always held the promise of paying for the next round of drink, "I see you for what you are!"

"You want to share with the rest of the class here Montgomery? Because you've clearly read a couple of chapters I missed and I feel like you at least owe me a cliffs notes version of what in the heck is going on," Zack kept his hands up and away from his own firearm, careful not to make anything resembling a threatening movement.

"You... you know what is going on," Montgomery faltered slightly, clarity returning to his eyes, "You're with them. You're coming for me."

"Who are they Montgomery?" Zack slowly walked towards Montgomery, inching forwards to where he'd be able to grab the firearm, "Who am I with?"

"Them..." Montgomery floundered and looked at his clenched fist in confusion, "You're with them..."

"No," Zack continued to inch forwards, "I'm with you. I'm your friend. I'm your partner."

"Partner..." Montgomery said vaugely, "Yes... you are my part..." Montgomery recoiled when Zack got within reach of snatching the firearm from his hand, "Like hell you are! Nobody tires to get one up on me you hear! Nobody!"

Zack closed his eyes as he felt the cool barrel of the PPG shoved up into the nape of his neck. Montgomery was exuding hatred and confusion, the sort of wild erratic thinking that he associated with taking dust or heroin.

It was just as Zack became uncomfortably aware that Montgomery was actually going to shoot him that Tiny made his move. The giant alien charged head first, catching Montgomery at the waist with his horned head and tossing him backwards into the circle.

"Thanks," Zack sighed as he pulled Montgomery's now discarded PPG off the ground and stared at his partner in confusion, "I appreciate it."

"What was that?" Asked Tiny, the giant was rubbing his knuckles with clear glee apparently weighing the possibility that Zack would allow him to hit Montgomery again.

"I honestly haven't got the slightest clue," Zack approached his partner the way one might approach a spooked animal, slowly and with deliberate motions. Montgomery was sitting on the ground, his legs splayed in front of him, staring at the coin in his hand.

"I understand now," he muttered in a sing song chuckle. A thin trickle of blood dripped down his palm from where the golden coin cut into his flesh, "I can hear the song."

"Montgomery?" Zack stared at the wound in confusion. The blood trailing out of Montgomery's hand was discharging a purplish foul smelling trail of smoke. Sparks of electricity erupted from the coin and up his skin, burning away his uniform and fulling the room with the smell of cooking flesh.

Montgomery dragged himself foreword towards the circle, cackling manically. Zack tried to run forward to help Montgomery, to pull off the coin, to douse the green flames that were starting to consume his partners body but he was stopped. Tiny grabbed him in one elephantine hand and dragged him from the room.

"No," Zack struggled against Tiny, "I have to help him. I have to help him."

"He's gone Officer," Tiny stared at the burning man in abject horror, "That is not your friend. By the Gods I swear it."

Zack swung the PPG in his hand around and pointed it at Tiny and growled in his most menacing tones, "Let. Me. Go." He wasn't going to let some superstition stop him from helping Montgomery if he could.

Tiny tried to snatch the PPG out of his hand, swearing loudly, "Foolish man thing I'm helping you! Listen to -" Tiny didn't finish his sentence. Something blurred and emerged from the entrance to the hallway, a veiled glimmering form of shadows and nothingness. It reached into tiny's head and removed his brain, crushing the bulbous mass of grey matter with contemptuous ease.

Zack fell to the ground and crab walked away from the door.

A dark hissing sound like escaping steam echoed from the mass of shadows, a dismissive noise full of satirical loathing. Zack pulled up his PPG and fired into the shadow but the blue bursts of energy simply rolled around the creature's body, no more potent to the creature than a bee's sting.

A hoarse laugh worked it's way out of Montgomery's charred and cracked lips where he sat cross legged in the center of the circle. The man had been reduced to a blackened and bloodied homunculus, barely reminiscent of what he had once been. White teeth, stained with blackened blood flashed and glimmered in the light of the unnatural green flame, "You should have run while you had the chance mortal."

"Montgomery what the hell is going on," Zack stood up and continued to fire at the shadowy form with Montgomery's side arm. A wave of panic, stronger than any he'd ever felt was seeping into his very marrow. If this wasn't a demon he damn well didn't know what was.

"A new beginning," Montgomery's body chuckled, though it was abundantly clear to Zack that Montgomery stopped being in control the second he touched the coin. The entire ritual murder had been a trap, a trick to get someone to pick up the coin, "We are becoming something greater than ourselves. You shall too. Serve your new god and new order and you will find that we are not without compassion."

"Sure," Zack stared down the demon, "Join me and we shall rule the universe together?"

"No," the creature laughed through Montgomery's lips, a reverberating whistling croon that was inappropriate for human vocal chords, "Not together, but I will permit you to serve me without devouring you."

"Yeah," Zack grabbed his own side arm off his belt with his left hand and pointed both guns at the creature, "Making a deal with the devil isn't exactly my style."

The creature chortled eagerly, "Are you sure you cannot be convinced to see the foolishness of your stubbornness?"

"Kiss my ass Lucifer," Zack spat in the creature's face and started the Lord's Prayer while firing with both guns. The demon snarled in fury, and rushed for the circle. It liquified and shifted into something etherial, a vaporous cloud of ichorous smoke twisted with sulfurous fire. The cloud billowed towards Montgomery's open mouth and charred body.

The not-Montgomery convulsed at the center of the circle as the collected human remains spread out across the room liquified and started flowing into his body. Montgomery's body soaked up the body like a sponge. His limbs shifted, cracking as audibly and bones and cartilage formed in places no human body had a right to have them.

Zack squeezed the triggers to his PPGs over and over again, firing into the bulging and cackling mass of flesh. He wasn't sure when the guns stopped firing but he continued to stand there pulling the triggers long after the charge capsules clicked empty. His throat was ragged and parched from screaming prayers, but he continued to rasp the holy words.

And then he was moving backwards, a firm pair of taloned hands grasping him by the shoulders and dragging him towards the door. He was too terrified to resist, allowing himself to be directed out of the room.

His begrudging hauler muttered angrily into his ear, startling him back into consciousness, "Come foolish man thing, come with Vira'capac. Foolish man thing fights when the wise run. There is no honor in allowing the tainted to consume you."

It was the Inquisitor's bird man. He stood in the charnel house stoic and unimpressed, an impassive an oasis of calm and clarity. Vira'capac eyed at the teeming mass of flesh in the distance in hatred, cool calculating slitted eyes darting around the room as he dragged Zack out out.

The slowly seeping screams of offal and flesh parted a hands breadth from the Kroot's feet, dark demonic energies unable to touch him as they flickered about the room. The leaping green fire twisted harmlessly around the Kroot, seemingly afraid to touch him.

"What is it," Zack screamed as Vira'capac tossed him bodily into the hallway. He landed hard on the deck and looked around, praying to wake up from the nightmare. The thugs he'd feared only minutes ago were spread out around the hall, their eyes glazed over in death. Their corpses were oddly flat, as though someone had deflated a balloon, "What in the hell is it?"

"The man thing already knows even if he won't say it out loud. Vira'capac cannot waste time in educating a man on what he already knows," The Kroot fiddled with a round object the size of an apple from a leather pouch at his waist. He bit at the top of it, tearing a metal pin out, and tossed the grenade into the room before slamming the door closed and locking it.

The muffled sound of an explosion and a piercing howl of annoyance echoed from behind the pressure door as the Kroot ripped out the door lock controls, "Can the man thing walk?"

"Yes," Zack stood up under his own power, though his legs felt like they could give out from fear at any moment. The cloudy red eyes of a former Narn stared at him pleadingly in death, "I can walk."

"Good," Vira'capac rifled through the belongings on the corpses, pulling a blatantly illegal plasma rifle concealed in a dead street tough's jacket and shouldering it, "Get to the other man things and get them armed and armored."

The locked pressure door shook under the pressure of being struck from the other side, Vira'capac's grenade apparently had only annoyed the demon. Zack stared at the door in horror. It was going to kill them, Zack just knew it. The Kroot grabbed Zack by his shirt and shook him, "Man thing get ahold of yourself. Man thing must go. Man thing must go now or we will all die."

Zack turned from the Kroot and ran as fast as his legs would take him. It would not be till hours later that he realized that he'd never though to ask where the Kroot had gotten the grenades or how it had known were to find him, by which time it would be too late to ask.

* * *

Shemn was a miserable self important toad of a man but he was never without purpose. It was with this in mind that when Kerrigan discovered that the Navigator had been making modifications to the ship's engines that she resisted the immediate urge to order him shot in the head for meddling with her precious machines and instead made the short trip to the ship's warp engines.

The warp field stabilization generator wasn't really an engine, it was more a metaphysical knife. A ship's warp drive tore a hole in the fabric of reality into a parallel dimension that lay just beneath the material world known as the immaterial realms. The bounty's warp drive was a golden tower six stories tall wrapped in hexagrammic ward shields and dedicated six layer void shield failsafe.

On any ship it was the most vital, and most dangerous, device on board. Were a saboteur to ever gain access to the warp drives directly they could very well open a hole in the fabric of reality inside the ship, circumventing the gellar fields and sucking the bounty into the deepest depths of hell itself.

It sat in a re-enforced chamber at the center of the ship behind ten separate adamantium bulk heads guarded by a small army of servitors, tech-priests, security guards, and Lionhearts. It still felt inadequate for the danger that the device actually presented.

Of all the machines Kerrigan tended to warp drives were the machine that reminded her most of the power and fury of the Omnissiah, tools of the worthy and weapons of the wholly corrupt. Cracked or damaged a warp reactor could condemn the entire ship to death, or worse, in the depths of the void. Even the most demented of saboteurs avoided that.

It was enough to turn one's stomach. Well it would have been if Kerrigan still had a stomach. Just as well that she didn't have one, this would hardly have been the time to start getting queasy.

She was planning on accusing a Navigator of borderline heresy after all.

He wasn't hard to find. The eager tech adepts were standing around the pale and lean profiled Navigator, listening to every word with wrapped attention as he gestured to something that looked suspiciously like a hololithic projection of alliance technical data.

Kerrigan strode past the final security check-point into the warp engines and bellowed as loud as her vox unit would permit in the direction of a small crowd of tech priests., "Navigator Shemn, I insist that you explain why you are co-opting my Enginseers this instant."

The Navigator did not immediately acknowledge her, instead pulling a pinch out of his snuff box and inhaling it. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, nursing a long suffering expression and muttering something in the language of the Navigators under his breath. Kerrigan stood behind him, arms crossed in fury, glaring at the Enginseers.

The navigator swore and turned to face the Magos once it became abundantly clear Kerrigan held no intention of leaving without an answer and the Enginseers would not risk her wrath. The pale man's frigid gaze gave no hints to his mind as the ticking of a pocket-watch punctuated the silence with a smooth tick-tock. It hung from a silver string that clashed with the the garish orange and white lace of his shirt and the black silk of his coat.

He smiled, translucent lips pulling back over dark purple gums and teeth like aged ivory. The navigator's smile was like the rest of him, unnaturally stretched and strained for such a slight frame. For a diminutive man he exuded the same predatory malice as a shark of the primordial Terran sea.

"Magos," he chortled as though his plan had been to invite Kerrigan all along, "How delightful to see you." The man wielded sincerity the way some men might have carried a battle axe. In a battle of tongues Kerrigan might find herself outmatched, so she decided not to bother with one.

Kerrigan punched Shemn in the face, knocking the astounded Navigator to the ground. The Navigator squealed like a stuck boar as Kerrigan grabbed him and lifted him into the air with a mechanical tentacle and shook him. She shook him back and forth till he begged her to stop then dropped him to the floor.

"Magos," One of the Enginseers said in fearful tones of astonishment, "He is a Navigator. One does not harm a navigator. It... it just isn't done."

"Clearly," droned the sarcastic drawl of Navigator Shemn as he wiped the blood from his nose with a silken handkerchief, "You are mistaken. It can be done and it has been done in front of you."

"I do not appreciate someone forging work orders Navigator," Kerrigan reached down and helped the Navigator to his feet, "Especially when it is the Enginseers I've given the job of testing the repaired shield generators."

"I forged no orders," the Navigator bristled, managing to look haughty in spite of a broken nose, "Navigators have equal authority to assign Enginseers to duties relating to the maintenance or modification of the warp technologies of the ship."

Kerrigan slapped him across the face again with the broad side of her augmentic hand. It collided with a panful thunk, "We sustained damage to the warp drives and you're only telling me about this now? By the Omnissiah's cog I would have been here myself had I known."

"It is not damage as such," Shemn spat a bloody hunk of phlegm, backing out of the Mago's reach as he hedged around the issue nervously, "It's more of an issue of checking the functionality of an more... esoteric system."

"Navigator if you are trying to hide behind technical jargon save your breath," Kerrigan stormed past Shemn. The man vastly over estimated his own authority if he expected her to just go away with a vague explanation, "What are you doing to this ship?"

"Magos I am bound by the authority of my office not to reveal the secrets of my trade to anyone," the Navigator rushed in front of Kerrigan and barred her path with his body, his eyes hard and his thin arms outstretched. It was a symbolic gesture at best but it showed a level of bravery she had not expected from the Navigator.

Kerrigan lifted the Navigator for a second time, "And I am bound by mine to bounce your uncooperative head off the side of the warp reactor's void shields until you change your mind. How does that sound?"

"Magos," hissed a sibilant voice. Head Navigator Illrich and Zorn Calven stood on a raised marble platform in the center of the room at a wide table of adamantium covered in golden painted lions. A few Enginseers stood near them, nervously looking from the Navigators to the Magos unsure what they ought to do. She'd missed them when she entered, the glare of the reactor's power supply having hidden them.

Illrich's chiopterian features were stoic but his eyes flashed with amused severity, "While I have no especial love for my bother navigator I would prefer that you did not harm him simply because he is too stubborn for his own good. The personal consequences of harming a navigator without sufficient cause would be unpleasant."

"The personal consequences of being declared an excommunicate techo-heretic are no less damning honored Navigator," Kerrigan scoffed, "Or do you forget my status?" Hopefully he had, otherwise the threat of an exiled Magos would be laughable. Kerrigan could no more challenge the testimony of three navigators than grow wings and fly.

"Perhaps compromise is best," Calven said in a slightly long suffering tone, "Seeing as how nobody has anything worth losing except their own stubbornness." The last word was directed at Shemn with outright contempt.

"Navigator Illrich we cannot mean to reveal it to her," Shemn began to protest but was silenced by a firm jerk of the mechandrite that held him. Kerrigan glared at him and made a shushing gesture with her right hand against where her lips had once been.

Calven rolled his eyes, "Shemn, we're going to tell her about the engines. The rest of it is for our order alone. I doubt the Magos gives two figs what we do as long as we aren't screwing around with the works of the Omnissah. " Calven didn't give Shemn the chance to reply as he offered the Magos space at the table with a wave of his arm.

Kerrigan approached the platform, raising herself to the table and depositing the Navigator with his fellows in one smooth gesture. Shemn muttered darkly as Calven helped him to his feet. Kerrigan ignored the Navigator's sullen mutters and stared intently at the technical readouts in front of the navigators, surprised at their accuracy.

"Where in the Emperor's name did you get these?" Kerrigan ran a finger over the blueprints with loving care. The drawings were hand done, not printouts and clearly not done by a servitor. They were the sort of swooping curves and jittery angles that could only be managed with a keen eye and an imperfect hand, "They have to be ancient... I've seen scrolls like this in the libraries of Oita."

"An STC blueprint," Illrich said with pride as he ran a hand over the aged scroll, "The blueprints used in the construction of this very ship. The ship builders of Damascus were cleverer than most, and the engines have numerous additions they chose not to include in the standard plans entered into the ship's database."

"You realize that's heresy in the eyes of my order," Kerrigan sighed as she took in the beauty of the ships systems. They'd simplified, modified, and improved a number of systems that had been badly in need of modernization, "I should have you in irons for this."

"No Magos, it is not. Not if it is done by the house of Navigators. Not if it has to do with our arts specifically," Zorn Calven chuckled, "It's the slightest of loopholes but it is no less legal."

Kerrigan grunted unconvinced, "And what is it that you've got my men here to do?"

Calven pointed to a junction between the reactor's feedback loop and the primary drive coil of the warp engines. There was a vestigial system nestled between two void shields and a hexagrammic ward. A common enough one for most warp drives but hardly worth changing work orders from more vital tasks.

"That one," Kerrigan said in outright bemusement, "Why are you re-directing men from repairing the shields to repair that system? It's a relic. We don't know what it does, unless you count draining power as a function. Most modern warships remove that relic entirely."

"Kerrigan," tutted Illrich in a bemused voice, "I'm surprised at you. Haven't you been studying the blueprints sent over by the Alliance as a show of good faith?"

"Half the ship is in disarray, those few Enginseers who aren't dead or wounded have been co-opted for some foolishness thought up by moon-brained navigators and to top it all off I've lost half the ships work servitors to taking in cargo," Kerrigan balled her fists and counted back from one thousand in her head. Punching another navigator would be cathartic but impractical in the long run, "No navigator I have not been reading the cultural exchange files sent by the Alliance."

"A pity," Illrich pulled out the data-slate he kept in a satchel at his waste. He tapped a couple of activation runes and handed it over to Kerrigan. The Magos took it and stared at it.

She'd began to ask, "What does this have to do with-" when she looked from the slate, to the blueprints, and back again. The were the same. The redundant system operated on the exact same principles as the hyperspace generators of the alliance, "By the Omnissah."

"My feelings entirely," Zorn nodded, "It would seem that one of the more elusive technologies from the Dark Age has been within our grip for centuries."

"How could... how could this be possible?" The very idea that the Adeptus Mechanicus could have something this monumental and not know about it was staggering. It had been not long ago that Kerrigan had written a paper on the necessity of removing vestigial systems with unknown functions.

She would have to revisit her entire premise.

"I suspect that the ancestors gave up hyperspace for good reason," Calven chewed the inside of his lip, "There were many technologies that we gave up in battling the Men of Stone and Men of Iron. Perhaps there is something about hyperspace that they were able to exploit."

"It doesn't bode well that they use a technology the first of the tech-priests on Mars chose to discontinue in the war of Iron and Stone," Kerrigan said with uncertainty, "They would not rob humanity of so potent a technology without reason."

"Whatever their reason might have been it seems obvious that we need to re-activate the machine as soon as is practical," Shemn said with a hungry glace at the blueprints. The creation of a stable method of faster than light travel not requiring entry to the warp would be a boon beyond measure for the house of navigators.

"Soon..." Kerrigan nodded in thought, " But not now. We are in too weak of a position to be experimenting with something this dangerous."

Shemn swore angrily, "Magos you haven't the authority to stop us."

"Don't I?" Kerrigan looked around the room, staring into the embarrassed faces of the Enginseers. None of them met her gaze, though a couple briefly tried and failed. They would not disobey the will of a Magos outright, even a Magos in exile, "I believe you overstep your place Navigator. You do have the authority to issue work orders, as much as you wish. I however have the ability to countermand orders and you do not."

"Magos please reconsider," Illirch's inhuman face fell, the drooping flesh beneath his three eyes flopping morosely.

"It is not forever but I really must insist that you wait," Kerrigan sighed and looked longingly at the blueprints, "We must wait."

Shemn opened his mouth to argue but was silenced by Calven's stern look. Zorn had not missed the longing in her voice. She wanted the secrets of hyperspace as badly as he the Navigators did. But there was a time and a place for everything, this was neither.

Kerrigan nearly jumped out of her robes as the hand-held communicator strapped to her belt chimed loudly and unexpectedly, its loud klaxon cutting off any argument. She pulled the wailing communicator from her side and flipped it open, staring into the machine's screen.

As she read the content of the message her shock at receiving a message on her personal communicator was canceled out by her anger. The Skitarii's message had been short and to the point. He'd clearly feared that it would be either jammed or intercepted by the Alliance.

It had consisted of one word.

Demon.

Not the sort of thing Cairn would send to her without provocation.

"If you'll pardon me gentlemen, Skitarii Thross just sent me a missive that must be attended to. Good day," Kerrigan did not wait for the Navigator's sullen goodbyes before turning on her heel and all but sprinting towards Tuul and the docking bay.

There was much to do.

* * *

The Captain's silent appraisal of the situation was more threatening than shouting could ever have been. An empty glass of something that smelled vaguely of brandy was clenched so tight in Sheridan's hand that the crystal was in danger of cracking.

Michael had never seen the Captain this angry. He was very glad that the captains ire was not directed at him.

"Miss Winters," Sheridan pressed his index and forefinger against the spot where his temples met, "Do you have any idea of the diplomatic situation you are putting me in? Of the danger?"

"I am obligated to enforce the laws of the Psi Corps," Miss Winters started but Captain Sheridan cut her off with a raised hand. His teeth were bared into something vaguely like a grin. It was more menacing than friendly, a forced half grimace rather than a smile.

"On psychics from the Earth Alliance. You are obligated to enforce those laws on members of the Earth Alliance. The Inquisitor is not a member of the Earth Alliance," Captain Sheridan spoke in an angry simmer. His voice was calm, reasonable and entirely without sympathy, "We do not have jurisdiction to enforce those laws on a non citizen, especially a diplomat. I just spent the better part of a my week getting every senator in Earthdome who would listen of exactly that. And seeing as how I gave tacit support of his admission to the League of Non-aligned worlds I hope you understand why arresting him is a big problem."

"That's bull and you know it Captain." Michael burst out before he could stop himself. Waving his hands in the air, "I'm the last person to come out in favor of the freaking Psi Corps but I'm not about to let that self important jerk hide behind diplomatic immunity after starting a riot."

"There are bigger things at work here than a jurisdictional pissing contest Michael," Sheridan pulled a document from the table in front of him, "We're already inches away from being put under probationary status by the Joint Chiefs for what happened with Bester. We can't very well go arresting the Inquisitor for the same thing we stopped Bester from doing. Especially if we might get accused of Treason for doing it."

"Treason?" Talia blinked in shock, "For what?"

"Miss Winters. Have you been asleep for the past month?" Captain Sheridan shook his head sadly, "If the Joint Chiefs decide we do have jurisdiction to arrest them we get charged with treason for fighting Major Pierce. If they decide you don't have jurisdiction then for arresting a diplomat on false charges."

"Hell," Michael swore angrily thinking about the current political state of the Earth Alliance Senate, "Those snakes might very well just accuse us of treason to appease the Inquisitor and stop them from going to war with us. My men did their job John. I stand by everything they did. They were right and so was Talia."

"Yes," Captain Sheridan sighed, "You were. But at this point even if we let the Inquisitor go they might toss you to the wolves just to appease the League of Non-Aligned worlds."

"Can you prove that he intended to harm the woman?" Captain Sheridan stood up and paced behind Talia and Michael.

"No," Taila said, though it clearly pained her to do so. She had the most to lose if the situation deteriorated and was likely the first in line for allegations of treason, "In fact the woman is singing praises for the Inquisitor. I checked her mind myself, if he caused her any harm it was done in a way I don't recognize."

Michael cleared his throat awkwardly, "I arrested a lurker named Amis who was stationed on a deep space listening post during the war. Forty-seven men landed on that moon. All of them were slaughtered except one."

Talia shook her head, "Sad... but what does it have to do with the Inquisitor?"

"I believe Mr. Garibaldi means that Amis thinks what wiped out his post came here on the Copernicus," Sheridan stopped pacing as he considered the matter, "Maybe we're approaching this the wrong way. The Inquisitor has been speaking our language for a short time. If there are physic people then in stands to reason that there are psychic predators. Demon seems as good a word as any to use for that."

"No," Talia shifted nervously in her chair, "We haven't got any evidence to support that. Garibaldi's team ran additional sweeps of that ship on your orders. Nothing could sneak past that."

"Unless it's something we've never seen before. Something completely outside our experience, now I traced the ships path. It passed the gravitational pull of that same moon Amis was stationed on," Michael pulled out a stellar map and laid it on the table. Tracing a long while line he'd drawn on the page, "It's not too far of a leap to say whatever caused problems there might have found its way here."

The Captain cricked his neck and rubbed out the tension, "I suppose there's a reason why you're taking the word of a man you've arrested twice in the space of a day quite this seriously."

"I checked his war record. They put enough ribbons on his chest to open a gift shop." Michael had also checked the man's psych profile. Prior to his incident on the mood there had been nothing even remotely indicating anything abnormal. Amis had been a model soldier.

"Word of the demon has spread among the alien communities. The Non-aligned Worlds have called a council meeting to discuss the possibility that something came onto this station from that ship," John reached into his desk and pulled out a rosary, "This demon talk has everybody spooked, even me if it comes down to it."

Michael turned around as the door to the Captain's office opened unexpectedly and Lt. Corwin ran into the room, accidentally bumping into Talia in his haste. The Lieutenant grasped his side and gasped for breath, having apparently ran the entire way from the CnC. He stood there gasping as he struggled to articulate complete sentences, "Came as fast as I could... big problem..."

Captain Sheridan wore a look of concern on his face for the wellbeing of his subordinate, "Slow down, tell me what's wrong."

"No," Talia said in a quiet terrified voice as she stared into the Lieutenant's eyes. Apparently she'd picked up something from Corwin's mind when he'd bumped into her, "Please no." She wore a look Michael hadn't seen on Talia's face before, even at the prospect of being accused of treason. He didn't like it.

Michael deeply hoped his suspicions were wrong when he asked, "How many people are dead?"

"We don't know," the Lieutenant shook his head, "It went after the power supply for the links early on. The only concrete evidence we have is from Mr. Allan and he's currently hysterical. Dr. Franklin his helping the wounded as best he can. We've verified at least twenty fatalities so far but there are probably more, lots more."

"What is it?" the Captain reached into his desk and pulled out a PPG, "Tell me everything."

"It's big sir, we know that for sure," Lt. Corwin shuddered, "Other than that we haven't been able to get a concrete report. Big and it can apparently become invisible."

"Hell," Michael swore, "Where is it?"

"Security is looking for it in brown and grey sectors but it could be anywhere and security would have no way of telling us," the Lieutenant shook his head, "It could be anywhere."

"Lieutenant I want you to go back to the CnC," the Captain fitted the pulse cap into his gun with a satisfying click, "I want you to get someone to fix the links as quickly as you can, contact the Captain of the Beijing Beauty and route them through his ship. He's a miserable angry son of a gun but he won't leave us hanging, not when there are lives on the line. And get him to send us his Marines."

"Yes sir," the Lieutenant nodded, eager to please. The officers emotional switch was so abrupt Michael was afraid Corwin might suffer whiplash, "What will you be doing?"

"There are two people who might have a clue what is going on," the Captain shot a meaningful glance at Michael and Talia. A silent 'and you arrested them' echoed within his head in the Captain's voice without him needing to speak them, "We're going to the armory and then seeing a man about an exorcism."

"Of course we are," Talia ran a gloved hand through her silvery blonde hair, puckering red lips in frustration, "Because sanity has suddenly decided to live elsewhere."

"Life is nothing if not interesting," Michael snapped his fingers as an idea came to him. God he was so good he amazed even himself sometimes, "Corwin, can you get a station-wide life signs monitor going? For everything that even remotely resembles life as we know it?"

"I can," Lt. Corwin nodded, "But if this thing snuck past our first scans I doubt it will do much good."

"We aren't looking for the creature," Michael said in a hollow voice, devoid of his usual good humor, "We're looking for its victims."

* * *

Daul woke up in a flurry of fear and confusion, trying to stand up on the rickety cot in his cell and falling to the hard floor with an uncomfortable thwap of skin on deck. His head throbbed and his mouth tasted of cotton as he blinked the stars out of his eyes and tried to place the room he was in from his memory. His mind felt sluggish, as though he were wading through quicksand for every thought.

"Cairn," he cried out, "Cairn where are you?"

A pair of gentle hands grabbed him by the thin fabric of his shirt and helped him back to the bed. Daul could not remember ever having owned a garment this particular shade of orange, much less having worn one. Sterile and unisex, a it was uniform. It was a prison uniform.

"Miserable bitch," Daul wiped at the spittle that would not stop dribbling down his lip, "Insufferable witch, I'll draw and quarter her with my bared fists." He'd protected her, warned her. And the ungrateful snake of a woman had stolen his rebreather and used his sigils of protection against him.

The man who'd helped Daul up chuckled and handed him a paper cup full of water. Daul drank it greedily, struggling not to spill it down his front. The muscles of his cheeks and lips still slightly paralyzed from the gas, he mumbled, "Thank you Father Al'Ashir."

"It is my duty to tend to my flock," He raised an wizened brow, "Even those who get me knocked unconscious." Daul noted with chagrin that Al'Ashir was still in the robes of his office. Station security had taken away none of the holy man's personal effects.

He stood up and saw bright patches of light flare up in front of his eyes, he staggered and steadied himself with Al'Ashir's outstretched hand. A moment ago he would have thought it were just the side effects of the drugs used to knock him unconscious but he doubted that the aged Father Al'Ashir would be so without symptoms were that the case. He looked the priest in the eyes, "They did something to me didn't they?"

The priest nodded once and leaned in for a low whisper, clearly not wanting to be overheard by whatever surveillance the Alliance had in place. His voice was calm but not without worry, "They injected you while you were asleep with something. They called it..what was it...yes 'sleepers.' They called them sleepers."

Daul froze, panic overtaking him. He closed his eyes and tried to touch the warp. The void obeyed his will, but it was a pitiful example of his usual power. He'd been able to channel more energy as a novice apprentice.

They'd done it. The bastards had stripped him of his psychic powers. The effects of sleepers weren't permanent, he knew that, but the side effects of being stripped of his psychic powers while a demon was on station would not be, "No, by the Emperor no. Not now! Please not now!"

Pleading would make no difference. Daul was cut off from the warp. Al'Ashir whispered soothingly to the Inquisitor, chanting the words of Sebastian Thor. The litanies of the third veil perhaps, it was difficult to identify the chants in the Damascan High Gothic.

Daul cleared his throat and regained his composure, remembering who he was. He was not some simpering cut-purse to be slapped in irons by the local magistrate. He was an Inquisitor of the Holy Emperor of Mankind. Powers or none he was not about to let himself be defeated.

"I apologize for that," Daul did not like for anyone to have seen his moment of weakness. Cairn had seen a couple of them, but it mattered less with Cairn. Cairn felt more like an extension of himself than another person, "I don't know what came over me."

Al'Ashir gave Daul a long, calculating look before his face cracked with pity, "Inquisitor, it is our weakness that makes us human. We are all fallible creatures, if you demand perfection of yourself constantly."

"You're wrong Father," Daul felt along the edge of the cell door with his fingers, searching for latches or imperfections and finding none, "I am not a man."

"You make an ugly woman," Father Al'Ashir drummed his fingers along his holy book, "And if you're a eunuch I will be exceedingly cross that I have lost a bet."

"No what I mean is that I'm a symbol of my office..." Daul faltered as Al'Ashir's words caught up with him, "Someone wagered money that I'm an eunuch?"

"Several someones actually. I wouldn't read too far into it, mean spirited gossip is the life's blood of a ship's nobility and an Inquisitor provides infinite opportunities for rumor," Al'Ashir clucked his teeth together amusedly, "There are also several who've wagered that and the Magos are... close. More still wager that you prefer the company of the Lionhearts or the Skitarii." The Priest's face was the picture of innocence, as though he were simply discussing the price of butter or bread.

"What business is it for a preacher to be involved in wagering on my manhood?" Daul rounded on him in indignation, ready to defend his honor when he realized the subtext of the priest's wide smirk. Daul shook his head, "You're trying to distract me from my failure."

"I haven't the remotest idea what you're talking about," Al'Ashir said with total sincerity before hooting with laughter, "Is it working?"

"Yes," Daul snorted, "It is." Daul grudgingly admitted to himself that it was some small comfort to have the preacher with him. He wouldn't have wanted to be alone right now.

* * *

As a rule Vir liked the Minbari. Having spent his entire life trapped in the circles of intrigue and dark plots of the Centauri courts he found the straightforwardness of the Minbari to be gloriously refreshing. When a Minbari said something, he meant it. When a Minbari gave his word, he meant it.

This went doubly for Delenn. The Minbari Ambassador was a shining example of morality and honesty beyond compare. It was for that very reason that he hated dealing with her for official matters.

When it came to a matter of honesty Londo was invariably lacking, and regularly gave Vir specific instructions to act in kind. He did so but never without guilt, especially with Delenn. It always felt particularly dirty to have to lie to Delenn.

So it was that he found himself standing in the ships garden facing the Minbari ambassador and trying not to feel too dirty as he lied once again on behalf of Londo.

"What do you mean occupied?" The Minbari Ambassador raised an elegant brow and brushed a lock of hair away from her neck, "Surely the Ambassador realizes that we have a scheduled meeting at this time."

"I apologize for the lateness of this," Vir wrung his hands and hoped there wasn't too much sweat dripping down his brow. Oh why couldn't the Gods have made him a better liar, "Important business for the home-world has called him away. He would be here if he could."

"Odd," Delenn's lips quirked into a smile, "I'd heard a different rumor."

"Reports that Ambassador Mollari left the station in a fit of insanity are exaggerated," It wasn't entirely a lie. Wildly drunk perhaps but the Ambassador was entirely sane.

"Indeed," Delenn sighed, "Just as well he's not here. I'm not at my best today."

"Oh," Vir relaxed somewhat and wiped the sweat from his brow, "Well that's good then."

"Yes Mr. Cotto," Delenn smiled a sad little smile, "I need time alone with my thoughts."

Vir swallowed, unsure what to do he needed to say something. He couldn't just leave the Minbari there by herself in the garden with no-one to talk to. It would have been rude at the best of times and she looked like she could use a friend. He couldn't walk away from that, not when he'd been feeling quite alone himself.

"Delenn," he started awkwardly, staring into the soft brown eyes full of so much confusion. Then, before he even knew what was happening, the words started to spill out of his lips. He meant every word of them but he was flabbergasted to hear them out loud, "The Inquisitor isn't worth listening to. He never was and he never will be."

The left side of Delenn's rosy lips dimpled upwards in a pleased way that seemed altogether better suited for her face. She ran her hand through her hair, her fingers curling through her soft brown mane, "And why do you say that Mr. Cotto?"

"Ambassador... I overheard... that is to say I was there..." Vir shuffled his feet embarrassedly. He hadn't intended to overhear the Inquisitor and Minbari Ambassador talking, he'd only come back to get a file left behind by Londo. She couldn't blame him for that. Not truly. It wasn't his fault.

She continued to stare at him with the same level gaze. Not angry, not sad, not anything, she was listening without a shred of shame or pride. He wished she were angry or embarrassed. He knew what to do then, he didn't know how to deal with this calm acceptance.

She didn't seem to be indicating he should stop though. In for a penny in for a pound, as the Earthers were fond of saying. It wasn't as though he were giving away some deep state secret.

"The Inquisitor sees the world the way he wants to. He believes that nobody can be trusted, so he acts in secret and invents enemies. He believes that he is the only one who can be trusted with information, so he guards it till it is dangerous for everyone. He believes that he hasn't a friend in the world, so he's always alone," Vir didn't like how many of those comments could have been made about Ambassador Mollari with equal honestly, "Don't let him drag you down to his level Delenn. Don't let him define you."

Delenn stood up, brushing the dust from the front of her robes. They were in keeping with Minbari fashion, simple, elegant, and unpretentious. They jingled slightly with the sound of small bells sewn into the sleeves.

She did not say anything as she walked up to him and planted a soft kiss on the top of his forehead, a customary Minbari gesture of friendship. Vir blushed and muttered something incoherent. He'd intended to say something about it being no trouble but the worlds ran together and simply came out as a muddled mess of sound.

"It is alright Vir," Delenn patted him on the cheek and walked back to the bench, "I understand. And you are right, I have allowed my uncertainty to rule me. It is unbecoming of a Minbari."

"Nobody's perfect," Vir looked at the garden, searching for a new topic. His eyes focused on a white tree sitting in a bed of yellow flowers, Earther foliage recently planted.

Delenn followed his gaze and chuckled, running her fingers over the petals of the yellow flowers. She bent low and inhaled their fragrance, "There are some things of perfection in the universe Vir. One only needs to look at the most simple of living things to find it."

"The most imperfect things are always the biggest," Vir sighed looking down a a footprint at the base of the tree where some inconsiderate sentient had stepped on one of the yellow flowers with a heavy boot. The crushed petals lay there, sad and dead, "And the most dangerous."

"Vir," Delenn shook her head and picked up one of the petals he was staring at, "The flower is only gone for a little while. In time the seeds will grow into more flowers and more life. Perfect beauty need not last forever." The Minbari placidity towards death bordered on the psychotic but Vir could see the logic in it. He often saw the logic in things other Centauri would have mocked him for believing.

Warning klaxons interrupted his deep thoughts as the park's lights flickered and died. The garden fell into shadow illuminated by the distant lights of blue and red sector. Delenn stood up, a worry etched in the corners of her eyes. The soft angles of her face hardened and darkened in the shadows, giving her anxiety an ominous edge.

The door that led from the gardens into the rest of blue and green sectors closed with a resounding click-hiss of the airlock sealing. The door that lead to the opposite direction ground as though it were about to close but hissed and spat in protest as it's motor burned out. A tree branch from a short willow hung lackadaisically through the air intake vent for the aft door, effectively destroying its motor.

"Not another attack on the station," hissed Vir though clenched teeth. He looked into the shadows in bemused perturbation, "Or another riot."

"I fear not Mr. Cotto," Delenn's eyes narrowed and a soft blue bio-luminescent light illuminated a small triangle of flesh in the middle of her forehead. Her eyes were focused on something just out of sight and her hand reached for something inside her robes, "I fear that at least one of the Inquisitor's predictions was worth listening to."

"Oh..." Vir stuttered as the sound of footsteps rushed in their direction, "That would be bad."

"Yes," Delenn pulled out a silver rod from her robes and shook it, extending a meter long sliver quarterstaff. She spun it twice as though verifying its balance and held it out in front of her, ready to strike, "It would be extremely bad."

Vir looked around for something to use as a weapon. He'd left the dagger given to him by his mother in the chest in his quarters, wrapped in an old sweater. He didn't like having it with him, the presence of the blade scared him. He didn't like even thinking he was remotely capable of hurting another person.

Now that he was scared and in the dark he would have been glad for the blade.

He spotted a likely weapon behind a rose bush and grabbed it, an iron hoe fitted to a thick wooden haft. It wasn't as elegant or sleek as the Minbari's quarterstaff but it was sturdy and he was glad for it. Delenn gave Vir's weapon a brief appraising look, but said nothing.

They stood there, waiting, listening to the rapid footfalls. Thump-thud, thump-thud, thump-thud, close and closer they came. Thump-thud, thump-thud, thump-thud, there were a lot of them, ten at least. Thump-thud, thump-thud, thump-thud, they were scared. Nothing ran that fast for no reason. Thump-thud, thump-thud, thump, they were there.

Terrified looking humans rushed into the garden, they rushed past Vir and Delenn, oblivious to their weapons. They reached the closed pressure doors and beat on them, trying to claw their way through the steel door.

It didn't take long to figure out what had inspired this particular brand of fear in them. If this wasn't the demon advertised by the Inquisitor Vir would eat his own shoe.

He would have much preferred eating his shoe.

It stood three meters tall, though it was difficult to say for sure. Its flesh undulated and shifted as many fanged mouths and pincers appeared and disappeared in constant unnatural metamorphosis. The tiny faces screeched and argued with each other incessantly, warbling and complaining. They urged the creature onwards demanding hot blood and fresh meat, cursing in every language Vir had ever known.

It walked on what could have been two legs and was no more than three, though the billowing noxious shadows that leaked from the jabbering mouths made it hard to tell. In spite of the creature's oblong and impossible physical deformity it moved with a sinewy grace.

It's face swelled and billowed in shadow. Equine lips hung beneath six sets of mismatched eyes, each blinking out of turn. It was big, it was powerful, and it had no right to exist in this or any other planet. The knowledge that a creature like this even could be real was enough to make Vir's skin crawl.

And here it was, snarling and thirsting for his blood. He gripped the hoe tighter in his hands. It wasn't going to kill him without a fight. Vir wasn't strong but he was no coward, no matter how much he wanted to run.

Anyhow there wasn't exactly anywhere to run to. The only exit was behind the demon.

Delenn chanted the ancient prayers of Valeria and slammed her quarterstaff on the ground, putting herself between the demon and the people fleeing it. Vir did the same with his hoe, it was an oddly self-affirming gesture. The demon's many mouth's smiled and it stopped to observe them.

"You do not belong here servant of shadows," Delenn stared at the creature with absolute conviction. Any lingering doubt the the Minbari had felt about herself was long gone, "Go back to your masters shade of Za'ha'dum."

The demon stared at Delenn with narrowed eyes and scratched a sagging breast with a scythe-like pincer before speaking. It's voice was as unnatural as the rest of it, enticing and vile at the same time, "What is its name to speak to a god as though it were an equal?"

"I am who I am beast, and you are leaving," She cracked her staff on the ground three times in proclamation, "Now."

"No, I shall not," It whinnied, it's lips pulling back over shark-like rows of fangs, "There is much feasting to be done here before I am strong enough. Your soul shall do as well as the warp-blessed who cower behind you."

"Get back!" Delenn struck with the staff, driving the haft of her staff into the creature's belly. It sank deep into the bulbous rotten flesh of the creature, spilling a dark stream of green blood. The creature neighed in fury but smiled in victory.

The tiny pincered hands of the creature latched shot out and grabbed at Delenn, tearing the staff from her hand as she fought off the thousands of razor sharp claws. Vir rushed forward with the hoe, smacking them away from her as the two of them backed toward the cowering humans.

The creature advanced with a twisted regal satisfaction. It tore the quarterstaff from its belly with a flourish that spread its filthy blood over the garden. It burned through steel and stone as though it were acid. Where it touched things that were green and growing it turned them into ash and cinders in a flash of orange flame.

It crowed, "Pitiful."

Delenn jumped into the path of the creature's outstretched claw grabbing a human child and pulling her to the ground out of the creature's reach. Vir took the opportunity to swing the blade of the hoe into the demon's face. The cold iron blistered and burned the demon's flesh, driving it back.

Vir stabbed forward again, and again, and again with the hoe. The makeshift spear burned at the creature's belly, harrying it and keeping it at bay. The creature's tail whipped out and caught him in the stomach, tossing him to the wall and knocking the wind out of his lungs.

He thought he'd been beaten cross-eyed as his mind tried to count a sudden influx of figures in the room. He shook his head and took a couple of deep breaths before he realized that he wasn't insane, there were more people in the garden. Seven of them to be precise.

Seven very angry looking people at that.

Drazi, caught in the throes of their blood lust, rushed into the room heedless of the danger and leapt at the creature screaming, "Green follow's Green Leader!" at the top of their voices. The creature lunged for the humans but Vir tossed the hoe to Delenn.

The Minbari caught it and struck the creature on the snout, repelling it back into the mess of angry Drazi. The broad shouldered lizard men hacked and slashed at the creature with their thick daggers, oblivious to the razor sharp pincers clawing at their thick scales. It hissed in fury and skewered one of them through the chest, not so much a stab-wound as it was outright disembowelment.

The other Drazi simply fought more eagerly, emboldened by the danger. Drazi were odd like that. Disembowel someone in front of their friends and most creatures get away as quick as they can, the Drazi will charge straight for you just to prove they're stronger.

For all their bravado it was abundantly clear that the Drazi were not stronger than the creature. It decapitated a second Drazi with an almost lazy swipe of its tail and licked its chops in glee. At best they were slowing the creature down.

They would not beat it.

A third Drazi died shoving Delenn out of the way of the demon's belly as it shifted into a gaping maw. The jaws of its belly closed with a resounding snap, swallowing the Drazi whole. Vir could not stand this, he had to do something other than just watching and waiting to die. There had to be some way that he could at least help the cowering humans to escape.

The demon wanted them for something, and it couldn't possibly be something good.

"By the Gods what what am I supposed to do?" he muttered as he rubbed his chest, searching for a way out of it. His fingers found the edge of the techno-mage's amulet at his chest and he froze. It was almost too much to hope for.

In all the adrenaline and fear he'd missed the buzzing sensation coming from the necklace he wore, the clear stone hot against his breast. It was shivering and shaking, virtually begging him to touch it. He reached into his shirt and yanked out the stone.

The toadish face had changed from it's leering expression that it had worn this morning to an angry snarl. As he held it in his hand he felt the hair all over his body stand on end with the sensation of control, power and rage. The techno-mages had given him the pendant for a reason. Well, this seemed as good a time as any to test out why. He pointed the face at the demon, praying that he was right.

For a moment he stood there, pointing his open palm towards the demon and feeling silly for having expected anything to happen. It was a stone face, not a plasma turret. What had he expected? He tried to lower his arm and realized that his muscles were not obeying. Every muscle in his body was tensed up in expectation of what was to come.

And by the Gods it came, Vir could attest to that. The power of the icon swept out, catching the demon in its wake.

A gout of green flames burst from the idol, engulfing the demon and igniting it's open wounds. The creature tried to shield itself in shadow but it's sorceries were for nothing, the green flame burned past the shadow and into the many million mouths. Cancerous blood boiled and bubbled beneath the creatures cracked and burning flesh as it howled in fury.

It coiled the muscles of its legs to an impossible tightness and flung itself upwards, past the point where the ships gravity operated and over to the other side of the ship. The green flames chased it, disappearing only when the creature was at a safe distance.

The pendant in Vir's hand dissolved into dust, its power spent and purpose fulfilled. The young Centauri stared at the fine powed still clinging to the sweat of his palms. The Techo-mages may not have known what he would use the pendant on, but the had to know of the presence of demons to give him such a boon. By the Gods what other truths of the universe had he simply dismissed as myth and superstition?

"Next time start with fire. Fire work better than sticks," crowed an amused voice. The avian warrior Vira'Capac dropped from where he'd been crouching in the sprawling duct work that criss-crossed the station's irrigation system. Vir could have sworn there was nobody up there when he'd entered. The Kroot read as much in his expression, "Wise predator not seen," he cackled, "And foolish Centauri prey too busy to look."

Vir pointed at the Kroot's gun, his voice coloring with indignation, "You couldn't have used that to help?"

The Kroot stared at him with one slitted eye narrowed, as though trying to determine if Vir were stupid or simply misinformed. Vir recognized that gaze. It was how Londo looked at him most of the time. Apparently deciding that Vir was simply misinformed the Kroot shook his head in disbelief, "Vira'capac no get clear shot. Wait for clear."

"Clear! It was as big as a house, you couldn't possibly miss it." Vir waved in the vague direction the charred earth where the demon had stood. The smoldering ground smelled of brimstone and suffering but he far preferred the smell to the demon.

Delenn walked over, the hoe in her hand still at the ready. The Minbari looked into the Kroot's cool reptilian eyes and touched her thumb and forefingers together to her temple, a horrified look on her face, "You weren't aiming at the demon, were you?"

"No," Vira'capac said without any guilt in his voice, "Vira'capac was not."

The human's in the corner were only just then being coaxed out of their blind panic by the remaining Drazi, their incoherently panicking minds not wholly accepting that the demon was gone. Vir looked at the nine year old human child Delenn saved from the creature's claws and back to the Kroot's rifle. Vir gagged, "Them? Why would you shoot at them?"

"Inquisitor's decision was foolish. Insulted demon was not stupid. Fed on warp-touched, grew strong. No warp touched to rob of strength, no strength gained," Vira'capac cradled his gun, clearly considering the merits of killing the humans then and there, "Think like predator or become prey. If Inquisitor waited, struck while creature weak. Fewer dead... fewer need to die."

"You will not kill them," Delenn's voice was not a threat. It was a statement of immutable fact. She would not allow the humans to be harmed, "We must not become that creature to defeat it. If we are to be better than it then we must earn it."

Vira'capac whistled, "I see. This is good, I feared you had no spine." The Kroot said it as though he expected it to be a great compliment, "Yes, you will do nicely. Good, Vira'capac will obey for now."

Delenn tilted her head for a moment then nodded, apparently satisfied with the Kroot's promise. She turned her back on Vira'capac and walked over to the shivering humans, speaking soft words of comfort. They were going to need comfort.

Vir flinched as a distant cry echoed through the station, mewling and indistinct. The creature was on the hunt again. The creature was still on the station, and still hunting. Vir stiffened at looked to the Kroot in fearful comprehension. The creature was pursuing human telepaths and there weren't that many of them on station, "Delenn! We have to warn Miss Winters!"

* * *

A/N: As always I appreciate any input you have to give. Cheers, sorry for the lateness of this chapter.


	13. Chapter 13

The Imperial shuttle darted past the bridge's field of view, speeding into the Babylon station beyond. A ship shaped like a hawk full to the brim with vipers Sheridan would great with open arms with a smile. Gladly shepherding the scorpion on his back across the river.

Li spat on the floor of the Beijing beauty's deck, ignoring the disgusted looks from his second in command and cursing Sheridan for the fifth time that day, "肏你祖宗十八代"

Li Xingjian had never been a large man, even when he'd been a young man living in Wuhan province he'd stood a good two heads shorter than the other boys. Being the runt in his neighborhood had only forced him to harden his heart and sharpen his mind just to survive the slums of Wuhan. Li was never one to let his height or circumstances get in his way. Through sheer force of will alone Li clawed his way out of the slums, into a university, and eventually into Earthforce.

His mother was fond of saying that Xingjian went to space so that he could finally be taller than everyone else. Li was a man who'd earned what he had and never asked for more. However he was without a doubt one of the most headstrong and proud men to have ever worn the Captain's uniform.

And yet here he was, sitting in his ship staring at that damnable station able to do little more than lick his wounds and growl menacingly in Sheridan's direction. He had to sit and beg and salute and follow like a good soldier whilst every bone in his body screamed to open fire on the station, court-marshal be damned.

Li doubted that he would ever be able to forgive Sheridan for having the unmitigated gall to have shattered that pride. To have facilitated the murder of thirty of his soldiers was a forgivable act for an enemy combatant, it was a soldier's duty to fight an die for his nation if necessary. But to aid in the killing of your comrades in arms was an unforgivable trespass. To murder thirty comrades and then be declared the commanding officer of the defeated and betrayed foes was a cosmic wrong of monumental proportions.

"Must you spit on the floor sir?" his second in command Lieutenant Klaus Meyer, a German officer with a sour temperament and a short temper, eyed the green globule of phlegm on the ground with distaste, "It's a disgusting habit."

"混蛋," grumbled Li, about nobody in particular, ignoring the chagrin of this second in command. It seemed unlikely Klaus would last for any period of time, but then few officers could. His mannerisms were considered uncouth even in his homeland of China, "I don't care what your delicate stomach can and cannot take."

"Sir it's been hours since we surrendered, when are you going to take the men off full combat readiness? The men are exhausted and we haven't even had a moment to hold decent funeral services. The men are loyal, but even loyal men have a breaking point." Klaus had a unique way of making a question to his superior sound distinctly like an ultimatum. Li did not appreciate the implied threat but it was easier to simply show Klaus his place than to correct his poor choice of words.

"You will continue to keep the men in combat rotation till that eyesore is no longer in Earth Alliance space Mr. Meyer," Li spat on the ground again staring at the _Endless Bounty_ with utter contempt, "I will not allow myself to be caught unawares by those該死."

Klaus's second appeal for the Captain not to spit on the bridge was interrupted by ensign Daniels. The ensign, still sporting a bandage across one side of his face, snapped his head around so fast that he seemed in danger of getting whiplash, "Captain Xingjian! We're getting orders from Babylon Five."

"What does the 死屁眼 want this time?" Li's knuckles cracked as he balled and relaxed his fists, stretching the puckered scar tissue that ran down his fingers. Each had a story and a memory, few of them happy.

"Soldiers sir," Daniels licked his cracked and blistered lips, "Lots of them, and armed. Very well armed. Jesus Christ sir... he wants them armed to the teeth and ready for action."

"He wants our forces... on his station... armed?" Klaus stroked a small patch of stubble on his neck and chin where his stitches prevented the him from shaving, "Good God the man has lost his marbles."

"He wants us to deploy marines sir, a boarding action. Apparently some particularly nasty predator got on the station and they don't have enough manpower to both hunt it and keep the aliens under control," Klaus indulged in a rare look of satisfaction, unnatural on his stern face, "Shall we reply sir? Or is this to be another transmission failure?"

Li grunted noncommittally, weighing his options. If Sheridan was willing to risk Li's marines entering his station there was a reason for it. A trap seemed unlikely, Sheridan probably wouldn't to abuse his office so obviously but then again he'd seemed unlikely to open fire on Earth Alliance ships, "No lieutenant, we will obey. I will not defy a direct order from my superior officer, ever one as undeserving as Sheridan. Deploy the marines."

Klaus nodded, "Do we deploy the first responders as well sir? Skull Squad?"

Li chuckled darkly. Sergeant Matthews and his squad were as ruthless as they were decorated and they had an axe to grind with Sheridan. Two of the recent dead were from Skull Squad. It had taken the threat of spacing just to keep Skull Squad from jumping on transports and burning their way into the station.

"Lieutenant, didn't you hear the order? He said he wants _all_ our marines. I obey my orders to the letter." Li smiled maliciously, "Make sure to relay his orders on to the other stragglers."

Li wouldn't actively betray Sheridan, but were the man to suffer an accident of friendly fire he wouldn't mourn his passing in the slightest. No doubt Skull Squad was not marine group from the ships in orbit of the planed who'd have an axe to grind.

Perhaps he'd get lucky.

"He also wants to divert communications through our systems sir. Military channels only," it was an unusual request unless the onboard systems of the Babylon station were inoperable.

"Do it," Li sighed. Another strange request from Sheridan.

The ensign nodded and entered the commands to reconfigure the communications array. The occasional garbled chatter of star furies and security of the _Beijing Beauty_ burst into overdrive as a clamor of frenzied voices, yells, shouts, and screams echoed through the comms, the screams above all else. It sounded like someone was being put through a meat grinder. It was just like the massacres of the early Minbar war. Panic, terror, chaos, he would not allow it on an Earth Force station.

Never again.

All pretense of rebellion or defiance left Li's mind, "Get the marines into breaching pods, immediately. We're cutting our way into the station. Sheridan's want's his marines fast? He's going to damn well get them."

* * *

The door to the Inquisitor's cell opened abruptly, showering the stale shadows with a sudden deluge of near blinding brightness. Daul's eyes struggled to compensate for the rapid shift in illumination as the fast moving form of a man collided with the rear wall of the cell and collapsed in a heap on the floor. Shiro, the ill tempered guard who'd originally arrested them rasped heavily twice from his place on the floor before going silent.

"By His word!" Al'Ashir rushed over to the bruised and groaning man, pressing his wizened fingers against the man's side and checking for cracked ribs. Daul rose to his feet from the cot, taking up a defensive posture and putting himself between Father Al'Ashir and the Drazi. He may not be able to use his psychic talents but he'd be damned if he was about to let xenos filth get at the clergyman. The long curved knives in their hands promised violence to come.

They stood stock still at the door breathing heavily. His eyes adjusted to see the outside, shadowy shapes and golden irises forming into leathery grey scaled xenos. Three squat, wide shouldered forms in the hallway wearing purple sashes and wide grins. Daul did not like the Drazi smile, there was altogether too much human in it.

It was perverse to see that much humanity in a xenos.

"What do you want here xenos?" Daul said it casually, as though he were not terrified out of his mind to be cornered in a dark room by knife toting lizard men. He noted with alarm that the curved knife of the largest Drazi was already colored with what looked uncomfortably like human blood, "There is nothing for you here."

The Drazi in front quirked his head to the side in confusion and Daul realized he had spoken in High Gothic rather than English. He repeated the phrase, kicking himself for forgetting that Gothic was not the lingua franca and stumbling uncomfortably over the Alliance word for xenos. "Alien" didn't have the same linguistic punch, though it was the closest word in the English language. There was something unsatisfyingly bland about it.

The large Drazi stepped aside and made space for a slightly smaller one carrying a grey box that held belongings Daul immediately recognized as his own. The golden skull mask sat in the center of the box, grinning cheerily. It's morbid face looked remarkably friendly to the Inquisitor, begging to be worn.

It could be a trap, but it was better to risk the trap than continue to feel helpless. Daul accepted the box eagerly, stripping off his prison uniform and pulling on the flak armored pressure suit without a care for his own modesty. The Drazi observed his nakedness with mild clinical interest, curious but sterile. He might as well have stripped in front of one of the Kroot Hounds.

The badges of office and wards noticeable weight about his waist seemed to lift an equal burden from his shoulders, exchanging fear for duty. Daul wore duty more comfortably. As he fastened the last clasp of his flak armored coat into place an odd urge hit him. On a whim he reached into the pouch at his side and pulled out two sashes given to him by Galut and tied them around his waist.

As though this action was what the Drazi had been planning for all along, the Drazi nodded firmly and snapped off a hasty salute thumping meaty fists across their chests, "Purple follows purple leader."

"Purple leader," Daul replied confusedly, though the words tugged at his memory. The Drazi he'd ordered out of his quarters two days prior had muttered something about following a purple leader after he'd wiped their memories but he'd thought it was a side effect of the psychic purge, "Are you referring to me?"

"He who wears purple sash is purple and follows purple leader. He who has green sash is green and follows green leader," One of the Drazi said as though he'd been asked to explain that water was wet, "I am Zha Tekk. I will be your first of purple."

"You mean to tell me that because my Ogryn manservant gave me a scrap of cloth you intent to assist me in committing treason to escape the station?" Daul fixed the helmet over his face, resisting the sensation of nausea as the HUD overlay appeared in front of his normal vision. Jarring words and images appeared all around him as the machine spirit of the helmet provided him with tactical data.

"Of course not," Zah snorted as though the suggestion were ridiculous, "Drazi follow Drazi leader orders."

"No," Daul pulled the concealed rapier from his cane and activated the concealed weapon's power-blade. It hummed to life with a cool blue light. He pointed the blade to Zah, the point only inches from the face of the hulking xenos, "Then what do you plan then Zah Tekk? Kill me and take the sash?"

Zah squinted as though he didn't entirely understand what Daul had said. He repeated the words as though he were speaking to someone who was a bit thick, apparently oblivious to the danger of his situation. Apparently the status of "purple leader" put the Inquisitor beyond suspicion of violent intentions, "Purple follows purple _leader_. Purple leader's last order was fight demon. Drazi fight demon."

Father Al'Ashir massaged his temples with one hand and caressed the holy book at his side with the other, drumming the cover with his fingers in cheery perplexity to the tune of "Faith's Shield." The clergyman's mind seemed to have frozen in deciding if this was an act of xenos heresy or divine intervention. It was probably best to choose the path of action for him before the clergyman came to a hasty decision and got them both killed.

Daul looked down at the unconscious form of Shiro, enjoying a brief jolt of satisfaction at the look of discomfort on his captor's face then shook it away in shame. The man had only been doing his duty. The harm he'd done was a product of ignorance, not heresy or misdeeds, "How hurt is the officer?"

Al'Ashir shook his head and brushed off his robes, "I am no medicus. I heal the soul, not the body but I see no imminent danger to his survival. It would probably be best to move him to the cot though."

"Indeed we need to move him," Agreed Daul. The Inquisitor shifted on his heels, intending to bend over and help pick up Shiro. He hopped out of the way as Zah bolted into the room like an overexcited spaniel and hefted Shiro onto the cot. Daul's fist squeezed the long blade in his hand reflexively, he did not like people approaching him from behind.

He could not remember the last time someone had managed to approach him without his knowledge. It had to have been before his abilities manifested at age fifteen and he'd started using them to nick sweets. His guardian, Inquisitor Gaal, had laughed out loud at the absurdity of having adopted a psychic. There but for the grace of the Emperor he might have become a common astropathic servitor when the Black Ships had come for an orphan child from a border world.

"You will not approach me without my permission," Daul snarled at the Drazi, "Understand that I will tolerate you and your kind for the service rendered and my current need of aid, but do not mistake this for an alliance between our governments. You _will_ obey me without question."

Zah hissed and caressed the blade belted to his side, his face blank of any hint of indignation, nodding as though total obedience to the Inquisitor was the most logical thing he might go about doing, "Come Purple leader. We take you to other cells to free."

"Yes," Daul strode out into the bright hallway, grateful for the helmet's built in light filters against the antiseptically sterile white lights of the hallway. The soft click of his boots upon the floor tiles of the main corridor echoed hauntingly in the empty solitude of the detention block, "Of course. Cairn and Galut have been detained long enough."

The five of them walked down the corridor at a brisk pace, looking through small panes of re-enforced glass into cells full of smugglers, pickpockets, thugs, dust-dealers, deviants, and drunks. There were surprisingly few prisoners actually detained for a station of this size and population, though that was probably more to do with the permissiveness of the Alliance society than any failing on the part of Mister Garibaldi. The obvious lack of guards, however, was.

"Where are the security officers for this detention center?" Daul shot Zah a meaningful glance which Zah returned in kind.

The Drazi rolled his eyes and held up three fingers and made a chopping motion with his hand, "To the six we took twelve."

Daul reminded himself that he couldn't spit fire at the moment, even though it felt as though he could as the words, "Thank you for that charming bit of cryptic nonsense. Now were are the guards?" seared their way past his lips.

The Drazi pointed to one of the cells and motioned to the window. Within the cell Daul could just see three or four human faces press their noses against the glass and shout curses at them, little burst of fog covering the window with each curse. The residents of the sixth cell were none too pleased with their situation, "To the six we took the twelve."

"How in the blazes did you manage that?" Al'Ashir edged closer to the cell to Daul's right, careful to stay away from the opposite side from Daul's humming power-blade. The clergyman got rude gestures and most likely ruder words from the guards behind the soundproof pane of glass, "Even with three of you they had to be armed."

"Earthers are not the only ones who can use gas," grunted the snub-nosed Drazi to Zah's left, "I can toss a can and pull a pin as well. Not much effort to shove a coughing man into a cell, even when there are twelve of them to herd."

"I suppose it isn't at that," Daul agreed, careful not to heap too much praise on the xenos, "Which cell are my associates in?"

"The big one got taken to the infirmary, bad reaction to gas tossed. The one with tentacles is in cell twenty," Zah licked his blue lips with a pink tongue covered in black spots, "The psychopath is in a secure cell on block E, but those cells went into lockdown. Can't be opened till the station gets off red alert... not without command codes."

"Cairn will be sufficient," Daul had no pressing need for the servitor, nor would he till they'd had a chance to properly lobotomize it. It would have been a greater liability than an asset in its current state of disrepair. Not having Galut was a great loss though. He would have liked having Ogryn muscle at his side.

Hopefully the Dr. Franklin could reverse any damage done to the Ogryn. There was no fear that the good doctor might be lax in his care, the man was religiously devoted to his task but his inexperience with Ogryn biology could be disastrous. It would be a shame if the damage was permanent. Ogryn were expensive and hard to train properly, worse still his new apprentice might take it personally were the great oaf to pass away.

She would be hard enough to tame without adding an additional challenge.

The Zah swiped a card across the door and tapped it with one of the hexagonal identity chips carried by the Alliance, liberated from Shiro no doubt. The door popped open with a hiss of hydraulics and a furiously screaming cyborg flung himself out into the hall, tacking the Drazi.

Cairn twisted his arms and split a solid looking set of manacles as though they'd been made of tissue paper. The Skitarii raised his arms to strike the Drazi's head with a death blow when Daul barked, "That will be _enough_ Mr. Thross. If you will not accept my rescue you may wait back in your cell."

Cairn's agumentic eyes shifted and twitched, lenses popping and whirring. The many mechandrites hanging from his face froze, ceasing their assault upon the confused Drazi. It took Daul a second to realize that the Skitarii hadn't stopped out of obedience but out of shock. Had the Skitarii believed he would not escape? No, it was something else... the Skitarii was disappointed or perhaps ashamed, though Daul hadn't a clue why.

Carin was as hard to figure out as his wife had ever been.

"I am curious," groused the pinned and prostrate Zah, "How long does it plan to stand on me clicking?" Cairn shot the xenos a disgusted look and lifted himself to his feet, elegantly flowing to a standing position with the aid of his mechandrites. The Skitarii saluted Daul with the sign on the cog and brushed his hands down the front of his robes, in a vain effort to scrape the recent proximity to xenos away.

"I assume that you've contacted the ship somehow," Daul chuckled. Cairn took particular pride in planning for every possible contingency, "And informed Kerrigan that I need my... personal effects."

Cairn nodded affirmatively and eyed the Drazi with distrust. Zah's lips pulled back, a low guttural hissing woof slipping past clenched teeth. Carin's optics whirred incredulity and he let loose a long curious beep of binary that Al'Ashir commiserated with too much for Daul's liking.

Daul shrugged and replied in Gothic, "We need allies, there is a demon to slay and the Alliance, in their infinite wisdom, has stripped my of my psychic powers. We can kill them later if it becomes necessary but for now I need as many bodies between me and it as are possible."

Cairn quirked an eyebrow and tilted his head, apparently weighing the matter. Daul could almost hear the vague whirring noise of memory engrams calculating possibilities and alternatives. Cairn groaned disappointedly and made a cutting motion in the battle hand talk of the Skitarii.

Daul chuckled, "Yes, by all means kill them _now_ if one of them looks at me cross eyed but do try to limit yourself till then."

Cairn's shoulders shook, his mirth only slightly detracting from the rythmic waving of his undulating mechandrites. Each swaying mechandrite posed like a cobra, snapping out then twisting back into readiness.

"Come Thross," Daul grinned wildly, "We have a demon to slay... lets..." Daul turned and looked at cell fifteen. There was something naggingly familiar about it, though he couldn't place what it was. Just another door in a hallway of dozens, but Daul knew without the faintest shadow of a doubt that he needed to get into it.

"Give me... give me a moment Thross," Daul strode toward the door deliberately, almost lazily, knowing what he must do. His fingers found the correct combination of digits on the keypad instinctually, a gift from Mr. Bester no doubt. The green light flashed twice and the cell swung upwards, gears grinding and grumbling for lack of lubricant, "There is someone we still need to get before we leave."

Daul's eyes fell upon the wretched shivering man in the center of the cell. He sat curled into a ball, covered with a blanked and rocking backwards and forwards muttering furiously. Dulled though his senses were Daul could still see an inky black tendril of something going from the man into the distance like an unholy umbilical cord, "It would seem our demon has been a busy boy."

He stared at his burgeoning retinue of xenos, "Grab him. We'll need him as well."

* * *

"A demon," Sáclair flung his glass across the room of the at a painting of his maternal grandmother. The red dripped down the canvas leaving stained streaks where the liquid dissolved the paint. "On the station... of bloody course there is a bleeding demon on the blighted station. Why wouldn't there be a light spited hell beast on the station? It's been hours since something blew up, got sucked into some unforgivable savagery, or tried to eat my spleen so the universe must make up for lost time."

"He does like to keep us on our toes," Kerrigan said noncommittally. Approaching Sáclair in his private study was a mistake, it was where he preferred to go when the alcohol was getting to his head but time was of the essence and she could not deploy the Inquisitor's emergency contingency plan without his say so, "Captain I need your authorization."

"You have it, of course," Sáclair sighed and sunk into one of the overstuffed chairs lining his study, his body flopped down in drunken relaxation, "What absurd time limit has he placed upon himself this time I wonder?"

"Six hours. If he hasn't either signaled the all clear in six hours we're supposed to destroy everything, the station, the stragglers, hell if we had planet cracker missiles we'd be under orders to conduct a full scale bombing on the planet below just in case of escape pods... I might request that anyway come to think of it," When it came to dealing with a demonic incursion into the material realms there was simply no such thing as an excessive show of force. Kerrigan disliked dealing with demons. They were under no obligation to obey the natural laws of physics or nature, disregarding logic by their very existence.

"And I had been so looking foreword to monotony after our recent unpleasantness," Sáclair's breath stank of liquor, and a heavy slurring half-lisp trailed off of every third syllable. His drunkenness was only emphasized by the murderous looks the serving girl mopping the wine from the paining with an old rag shot him, an act she would not have dared were her wits about her. Kerrigan probably should have ordered the servant to report to the kitchens to be strapped, but the servant's disgust was well deserved. The man had become a walking distillery.

"Sáclair," Kerrigan snapped an augmentic thumb and forefinger with a dull bronze clack, drawing Sáclair's attention as he phased in and out of coherence, "Sáclair I need you to focus. Now is _not_ the time for your foolishness. I need you to give me your imprint on the pad. I need your authority."

The Captian reached out with his hand towards the small green biometric sensor but grabbed it, rather than simply pressing his thumb in the center of the pad. Sáclair's eyes hazed over, and an oddly sterile and monotonous drone slipped past his lips, "No."

"I beg your pardon?" Kerrigan's head swam, her mind feeling as clogged and sluggish as if she'd imbibed as much as the Captain. Sáclair's sudden change of mood had near to given her whiplash, "The Inquisitor needs an escape strategy for when he defeats the beast."

"_If_ he defeats the beast he may need the teleporter. _May_ need it mind you," Sáclair tossed the pad into the air, almost lazily, spinning it on his palm with surprising dexterity, "_If _he needs to escape before they've slain the creature I cannot allow them back onto the ship and risk contamination. No. I will not authorize the use of teleporters. We cannot know if the beast can travel the wake in the warp a teleportation leaves."

Kerrigan's voice box crackled with frustrated static. Drunk as a skunk and defiant of the Inquisitor's intent though he might be the Captain wasn't wrong. He wasn't in violation of the Inquisitor's orders either, not if one obeyed the letter rather than the intent. But the man was altogether too glad to assist the Inquisitor's increasingly self flagellatory plans.

It was hard to tell which of them was more eager for death some days, Sáclair or Hilder.

"Bull headed men," Kerrigan growled to herself, then berated herself for such unproductive thinking. She'd forgone the physical trappings of femininity long ago but she'd never been entirely able to rid herself of the prejudices of the fairer sex. They were just so insufferably male sometimes.

Luckily Sáclair seemed oblivious to the faux pas, "Kerrigan I know you've sent your men to the station but there is no way for me to commit the bulk of my troops to this without alerting the Alliance to our intentions. They watch our ships like hawks. "

"Tuul," Kerrigan sighed, "I sent Tuul. Tuul and my personal security force." It was no small sacrifice, the six heavily modified Ogryns were some of her best work. In addition to a sophisticated series of agumentic enhancements to their core physiology, their bones had been re-enforced with adamantium composites and heavy duty ceramics etched with hexegrammic runes and sigils. The loss of even one of them would come as a heavy blow to Kerrigan, she no longer had the resources of a forge world behind her to replace them. Nor, for that matter, were the stock of Ogryn on the bounty without limit.

Sáclair smiled ruefully as he sunk into an overstuffed armchair and pulled a silver strand from the cushions, smiling at it contentedly, "I know that he was your apprentice Kerrigan but you must understand that no one man is worth risking the entire ship. Even your former apprentice."

Apprentice, the word nagged at her for some reason. Why would the word apprentice trouble her so, she wondered. Then it hit her with the force of a lance blast, "Even if that one apprentice is your son?"

Sáclair bared his teeth, contorting his face into a feral grimace of disgust, "You wouldn't."

"I already have," Kerrigan's vox caster gave the words the sort of banal finality of closing a coffin lid. It had been an oversight on her part. Tuul and the boy had been tasked with repairing the Glorious Blessing after it's crew finished unloading their cargo of grain. Kerrigan had commandeered the ship and its crew, loaded her bodyguards on board, and ordered them to make for the Babylon without thinking twice about the two boys in novice robes.

"I never expected this from you Kerrigan," Sáclair's voice crackled with emotion. It might have been sadness or perhaps betrayal but it was difficult to tell beneath the seething palpitations of anger eminating from Sáclair.

"I use what I have to do what is right," There was no point in explaining that it had been a mistake. It was unlikely Sáclair would forgive her and the admission would undermine her demands.

Sáclair sat motionless and simmering with fury. The ruff of his collar twitched agitatedly with every disgruntled rasp of breath, the white of the makeup upon his face falling upon the purple silk in globules of sticky-sweet wine scented perspiration. His mouth opened and closed, furious whispers of sound slipping past his lips as though trying to say several different things at once. A side effect of having a hundred generations of men cohabiting his head no doubt.

"No," he finally rasped, "I make no exceptions, not even for my _bastard_." His eyes flashed at the last word, a generous measure of disgust coloring the world. He shoved the cable into his arm and convulsed from the rush of sensation as the ship's systems purged his mind of its incoherence. He stared into her eyes with not even a trace of the twinkle he once carried for her, "You will prepare the Inquisitor's other contingencies. If we need the teleporter later we will use it, but not until I permit it. _If _I permit it."

Kerrigan bristled at the indignity of being given orders, "I am _not_ beholden to you Captain."

"Miss Frist," Kerrigan winced at the intentional insult of leaving off her proper title of Magos, "I don't give a flying toss who you think you are, or are not, beholden to. You will prepare the Inquisitor's contingencies because it is the right thing to do. You will do it because it is logical. And you will do it because I have just given orders to my security forces to kill you and your entire retinue if you do not."

The doors to Sáclair's study opened inwards and Danzig walked into the room with a team of Lionhearts. The normally jovial private soldiers of Sáclair stood at a safe distance from her mechandrites and cutting tools, faces devoid of emotion and plasma guns aimed at her center mass.

Sáclair swiveled in his chair, turning his back to her and acknowledging her as one might address sick upon the ground, "You will leave now Miss Frist. You have sent my son to his death. A boy too young to have known a woman and you have condemned him to death."

"I did what I must Nathaniel," Kerrigan sighed, "We all do what we must in service of the Emperor."

"That is the last time you may call me by my given name, Miss Frist. For that matter it is the last time I wish to deal with you in person. From now on we will be communicating through intermediaries or not at all. I will tolerate your presence as a sign of respect to our past friendship," Danzig approached her cautiously as Sáclair exposited, eying her mechandrites as though they were angry vipers. The Lionheart placed an apologetic hand on her shoulder and nodded to the door, "I'm sorry Magos but you need to go now."

Kerrigan allowed herself to be led out of Sáclair's study and into the hall by Danzig's squad. The wall hangings and portraits of the Sáclair household all looked less cheery than they had when she'd walked past them before. The hook nosed faces all stared her down with hawkish indifference to parallel Sáclair himself.

As the door closed Dazig let loose a nervous sigh and relaxed his rifle, his squad following suit. The guns were no longer humming with charging plasma, but they were only inches from readyness. He scruffed his hand through his hair nervously, "Magos understand that I like you. I enjoyed working with you in the past and I hope to do so in the future. I appreciate duty as much as anyone."

Kerrigan chuckled. Appreciated duty? Omnissiah guide her, the Lionhearts were as single minded as Kasrkins. She doubted they used the necessary without chalking it up to serving duty in some way, "You don't say."

"Yes," Danzig smiled warmly, with all the openess she'd come to admire them for, "I understand why you made the decision you made. It was the correct one."

"I... well..." Kerrigan stuttered, "I appreciate the support."

"I wasn't finished," Dazig's smile disappeared and he raised his plasma gun, pointing it between her eyes, "I don't give a damn if it was the _correct_ decision, it was an unforgivable one. If he gets a cut, you get a scar, if he breaks an arm, you lose one, if he dies may the Emperor have mercy on your soul."

Danzig was as much a father to the children of Sáclair as the Captain himself, more of a father if some of the rumors were true. The Lionheart was responsible for their safety and security. And he would make good on his threat, or die trying.

"Boy," Kerrigan shook her head, "Iino is lost to me already. If I am trapped in this godforsaken scrap of nowhere without Tuul, Hilder, or Sáclair I am already dead, just still moving."

* * *

It took some effort to ditch her assigned bodyguard but Ami eventually managed it. Hamman was well intentioned and dedicated, but he was still a man and Ami's chamber maid Marta could be quite distracting. She had a thing for soldiers, especially Lionhearts, but then most women Ami knew did. If even half the stories she'd talked Marta into telling her were true she doubted Hamman would see straight for a day, let alone notice her absence before she'd done what she planned.

The commoners clothing, a set of rough britches and a shirt the color of pale roses and a black veil that covered her mouth and nose covered in hanging jewelery that jingled with every step itched terribly on skin more accustomed to velvet and silk. Amon Sui women's fashions were out of style on the ship, except with the more conservative of the common people and it was easy for her to tell why.

It was a decent disguise but the veil had an annoying habit of bunching up in her mouth when she talked or breathed. She was constantly spitting to blow the sheer fabric from between her lips where the sharp pins of the jewelery poked painfully into the meat of her lips. Modesty was substantially more uncomfortable than she suspected it would be.

The security guards around the Belzafest sector eyed her with suspicion as she walked by them with a practiced nonchalant boredom. The were willing them to simply ignore the teenage girl wandering about on her way to prayers provided she didn't call too much attention to herself. The Belzafest youth went to prayer often enough that it shouldn't be strange for the more conservative of the crew to find common ground with them.

She held her breath as she passed guard post after guard post, never daring to exhale. If she were recognized the point of this entire mission would be moot. Worse still her sister would latch a bodyguard so tightly to her that she wouldn't be able to sneeze without raising an alarm.

She past first one, then two, then thirty guard posts at every access point before she started to get worried. Her plan wasn't as well conceived as it had seemed in her study. Her cover as a lowly crewman's daughter would only take her so far if she wanted to examine the most recent bomb site for clues. Three blocks around the bomb site were cordoned off on all sides, and she dared not reveal herself to the security forces else risk giving up the chase entirely.

It took a good hour for her to hatch a plan. Ami purchased a paper cone of roasted nuts coated in jam and leaned on the wall of a Belzafester cooper shop. She stood against the cooper shop window, enjoying her snack and listening to the shopkeep wax poetic about the merits of wood sole shoes to anyone who would listen. Eating the nuts through the veil was infuriating and the cooper's voice sounded like a wailing dog but it served a purpose.

Even the most dedicated of guards will lose interest in his job after a while. The security forces of the _Endless Bounty_ were engaging in twelve hour shifts, sometimes double shifts, to protect the Belzafesters. Hussein, a guard she recognized from the more affluent suburbs of an upper tier merchant sector, was not accustomed to such work. He nodded off every ten minutes or so, waking with a startled snort and a look of supreme shame.

The next time he nodded off she near sprinted past his security cordon, blazing past him and into the dangerous section of ship beyond. As his startled yells faded into the distance behind her rapid sprint Ami hoped he wouldn't be punished too badly by Osma for losing her. Just a whipping at worst.

She ducked down through a back passage and weaved her way towards the crime scene, taking care to double back and take an occasional wrong turn just in case Hussein was still following her instead of calling for backup.

The sector was disturbingly empty, the Belzafesters dropped everything and left once the initial explosion went off. You do not survive in occupied territory without gaining a healthy sense of danger management. Her interest however was not in the acts of the saboteurs but in an alley to the left of a small parish a forty meters to port.

It was a disturbingly chipper space. The walls of the parish were painted in near florescent colors by some primary school teacher with more good will than talent to show a group of multicolored stick figure children holding hands around a two headed eagle, insufferably mawkish with it's maudlin smiling beaks, dimpled cheeks and winking eye. A looping script hesitantly spelled out "Miss Ollanda's Scripture School" in gothic letters and Damascan script one above the other.

A lovely place for a murder really.

Another hastily drawn outline of a human lay in the middle of the street draw in in chalk rather than acrylics, shaded with the dull black brown red of caked blood. It wasn't part of the mural. The girl, Athine, had been coming to prepare the school for an evening scripture reading for Belzafester children. She was one of many Belzafesters who'd taken the place of the dead crew, making sure to carry on where they left off.

Osma's report suggested that the girl had been ambushed from behind with a serrated knife between the floating ribs. She had not died quickly or quietly. The endless thrumming hum from an ancillary cooling vent about five meters down the alley had been more than sufficient to cover the poor woman's screams.

They'd been lucky that a parish pastor had come to Athine with some tea and sandwiches as a thank you gift for her hard work. He'd been able to cover her with a blanket and hide her from the children before security arrived. Lord only knew how he'd contaminated the crime scene but children didn't need to see the woman who sung "The Emperor Loves Me" to them and tucked them in for their afternoon nap gutted like a grox.

It was more oppressive than she'd though it would be. It was not the first time she'd been around death. Even the nobles of a starship were crew, and death or near death was a constant threat to the void born. But this empty scrap of nothing was as visceral as any dead body she'd seen. If she squinted Ami could nearly see the Athine's prone body where it had lain.

She pulled off her veil, glad to be rid of it, and thumbed through a small stack of still shots of the area. Osma's record keeping was meticulous, there was not an inch of the hallway for fifty feet that had not been photographed but Ami was sure that she could see something that he hadn't.

Osma was a fantastic security chief but behind closed doors her father sometimes bemoaned the man's lack of imagination or deceit. He simply could not think as a thief or murder might. Incorruptible and hard working though he was, nobody attributed Osma with an abundance of lateral thinking.

After thirty minutes of fumbling with an auspex liberated from Hamman's belonging and an intense inspection of the scene Ami grudgingly found herself admitting that her own observations of the crime scene were equally insufficient. There were no footprints or trace elements that she could track, no security monitors, and whatever other evidence there might have been was covered with a thin layer of pulverized stone and metal blown out by the explosion further into the sector.

"Damn," Ami swore, "Damn and blast!"

"I believe that you're in the wrong place," chuckled a grating voice from down the corridor that froze her stock still. A figure stood two arms reach away from her, wearing the red uniform of Belzafest security and a smug look, "A girl could get hurt alone in a place like this."

"I can take care of myself," Ami pulled the veil back over her face defensively and tucked the auspex back into her shirt. Had he seen? Ami couldn't let Carran know that she'd defied Carran's orders.

"Can you?" the security officer sauntered over to her unhurriedly, "It seems to me that a pretty girl like you shouldn't be around here. We have orders to detain anyone who comes around here."

"I'll just be going then," Ami turned on the ball of her foot and tried to slip past him, only to find her arm stuck in the security officer's firm grip.

"No, I don't think you will," he snorted, "You see I'm hunting a murderer. And we can't take chances with a murderer."

Ami shook her head fervently, "I am no murderer."

"You see, it doesn't work like that. You don't get to just say 'no I'm not' and walk away. It could be you're telling the truth and it could be you're full of it," he smiled pruriently and gripped her arm painfully tight, "I need some convincing."

Ami struggled as she realized his intentions but she could not tear herself from his grip. He chuckled at her impotent struggles. "I'm going to need a good deal of convincing there girlie."

"I... I'm Ami Sáclair your liege lady and mistress," she hissed in fury, "You will unhand me at once!"

"Impressive," the guard smiled in amusement. His haggard face and hard eyes bored into her, his powers of reason overpowered by other more pressing concerns, "You even got the high gothic right, but I suppose you religious types learn that don't you? Next time try for something more believable. A sector leader perhaps."

The man did not believe her. He must believe her

Ami reached to pull of her veil, only to have him grab her other arm. Blind panic seeped into her veins down to her very marrow, as the man licked his lips in anticipation, "Do not do this. You do not want to do this."

"They tell you it was a terrible sin that would leave you in horrible pain eh' girlie. They do that to religious types sometimes, make you live all quiet and reserved," he shoved her against the wall, sniffing her hair and groaning, "Fight back if you like girlie, this is going to happen."

Ami fluttered her eyelashes charmingly, smiled, and cooed, "If you insist."

Perhaps it was his desire to have a son or simple practicality but her father would never be so remiss as to fail to have his daughters educated in the basics of defense. As the man bent in for a kiss smashed her head into the man's nose, just as she'd been taught to by Danzig, shattering the cartilage. The guard staggered backwards, grasping at his bleeding remnant of a nose.

Thick nasal blood weeped from the oozing mess, clumping in his beard and dripping into his screaming mouth. He snarled and swore, his eyes filling with tears, "Gyoo bitch! Whore! I'll ugly you up for the next man."

Ami did not wait for him to recover before sprinting down the corridor in the opposite direction. The faster she found somebody, preferably a group of somebodies, the safer she would be. Danzig's voice echoed in the back of her head, "Don't let someone bigger than you have time to think. Hit him hard, hit him fast and get out of there. Winning a fight is less important than getting somewhere safe. You can worry about winning a fight once you've got an advantage."

The various shipboard sounds and machines were inconspicuous by comparison to the heavy clomping steps of her pursuer and his heavy wet breath. He was far behind her but each step and each breath he took made him seem on top of her already.

She ducked down alleys, doubling back, climbing over low walls and up ladders trying every trick she could think of to lose the man. For all her training though, she felt like a rat being chased by one of the ship's terriers. A rat could run as long as she wanted, the terrier would eventually catch it.

She was so focused on finding something to distract him that she didn't see the pipe till she tripped over it. She went elbows to ankles in a clumsy cartwheel of skirts and veils as her foot tangled in her dress. Her head swam from the impact as she stood up too quickly and felt a rapid spinning sensation, little pinpricks of light blinking and flashing in front of her eyes.

It was wholly unfair of the corridor to start spinning and toss her back on her bottom, it had no right to start moving without her consent, especially since she was no doubt nursing a concussion. A condition that was not helped by the pair of rough hands that grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her back to the floor so violently she feared her head might pop off.

"I got you now you bitch," the guard pulled a set of riot cuffs from his belt and tied her hands behind her back. Ami's head throbbed with a mix of terror and pain as he yanked the veils from her face and twisted her head around to face him, "I'm gonna make you pay."

"No," an educated voice with lilt of nobility chuckled, "I don't believe you are."

A handsome blonde man, hale and muscular kicked her assailant across the face, knocking him to the ground. His roguishly tattered clothing and knotted muscle marked him as a giddy rapscallion of a man, hale and beautiful. In fairness the most wretched of mutants could have come to her aid and she would gladly have kissed his feet in thanks and called him beautiful.

The guard pushed himself to his feet and pulled a combat blade from his shirt, a short ceramic weapon as long as her forearm. The black knife lashed out towards the blonde man's unprotected chest in a wide swing, leaving a long thin trail of blood along his pecks. The blond man yelped in pain, pushing the knife away from himself and shoving quick succession of palm strikes into his attacker's broken nose.

The guard squealed and staggered back drunkenly, only to receive a rabbit kick to the ribs from a woman in a shredded body-suit who seemed to drop from nowhere. Bucking from the pain the guard collapsed to his knees, begging for mercy. The blonde man grabbed the guard's head from behind, and twisted left in a single agonizing jerk. The ear splitting crack of shattered bone heralded the man's death.

As he smiled at her roguishly Ami remembered where she'd seen him before. He was a member of her father's court. Not a favored member, but not one under suspicion of treachery either.

Ami had never much liked Sørian. He was one of the nobles who valued his own comforts over the well being of the ship. However in this moment she couldn't think of anyone more magnificent in all of the universe. Ami melted into the man's arms, taking comfort in the scent of lavender as he led her away from the corpse.

The lithe woman eyed her dismissively, but followed, her shredded body armor and bleeding wounds apparently troubling her little. She was pretty, if not beautiful, and walked with the grace of a dancer.

Sørian reached down and lifted her to her feet, his face quirked into an amused half smile. He reached brushed her mussed hair away from her face and rubbed the tears away from her cheeks whispering softly, "Don't worry. Don't worry. It will be ok. Sørian is here for you, now lets get you to somewhere safe. You've had enough excitement for today."

"Why... why are you here?" Ami asked nervously eyeing the wounded woman's shattered porcelain mask and blood covered shirt. It seemed churlish to ask considering the help they'd just given her but it needed to be said.

"Why I would have thought that were obvious," Sørian chortled looking at his companion amusement, "We're hunting for Amon Sui saboteurs."

The woman pulled the shattered remnants of what had once been a personal displacer field up from her belt. It was a delicate sort of last resort escape method that teleported its bearer in a random direction, nearly as dangerous as taking a bullet considering that one could easily teleport inside of a wall or into the void of space, "They tried to kill us. We felt it was necessary to return the favor."

"Now isn't the time to discuss this. That I found you in one piece is a miracle Hex... whatever your real name is. I suppose the time for secrets is over isn't it?" Sørian chewed his lip, "If we don't get out of here soon and to safety we're going to have to explain why we had to kill a security officer in a restricted sector. I don't fancy explaining that to Osma."

Ami started laughing, the stress of her situation finally overtaking her. She'd helped murder a security officer. In her defense but he was no less dead. She laughed and laughed till her eyes filled with tears and she descended into a fit of grateful sobs. Emperor almighty what had she done, what had she become part of?

* * *

Pandemonium reigned in Babylon's customs sector as Tuul and his retinue disembarked, civilian and diplomatic captains alike were scrambling and battling each other for position on the disembarkation queue. A gaggle of chittering insectiods eyed his servitors with a mix of suspicion and fear, long tendrils of condensation puffing from the lip of their visors.

It would seem that the demon had made its presence known on station, but where and to what effect he could not even begin to guess. The apprentices Abbas and Orr, were doing their damnedest to look unaffected by the prospect of facing a demon, with moderate success considering the circumstances. Tuul knew that it was only the heavy equipment in their hands and arms that kept their legs firmly planted enough on the ground to keep them from fleeing in terror, it was about the only thing keeping him in place either.

He would have much preferred for Kerrigan to be here in his place, but the woman was banned from the station. The last thing they needed was to get caught up in a pissing contest with the alliance over the niggling detail of having disrespected Mr. Garibaldi. Tuul was the only one who could do the job, so Tuul it would have to be.

It would be much more to his liking if three dozen very nervous looking guards were not pointing phased plasma weapons at him. Tuul and his phalanx of war servitors had not passed by the notice of the customs officers. They were sturdy built war machines more than capable of assisting the Inquisitor in battling the demon.

Provided, that was, that he could get onto the station without getting a plasma blast to the head. The security forces of the station seemed to be under the impression that rendering his strike team to dust would greatly ameliorate their current situation. Well it wasn't his fault the pig ignorant fools hadn't event take the most basic of precautions in protecting their station from incursions. It was a bleeding miracle they didn't have them every other week.

"Omnissiah's blessed cog," Tuul swore at the stern faced Alliance security officer. The dark skinned man flinched as the heavy arms of Tuul's full servo harness snapped shut with the crack of sparking metal, "Of _course_ I brought weapons. If I had my druthers I would have a conversion beamer with me _now. _ You have a demon on your station and you're arguing because I brought combat servitors?"

"I'm not letting you on this station with those weapons," the officer stubbornly protested, "And you're going to have to shoot your way through a whole mess of pissed off marines in a few minutes. So unless you want us to beat your sorry butts sideways you're going to get back on that rickety looking bird and get the hell off our station."

"Listen to that," Tuul groaned out in furious monotone, "Listen!" The comm chips of the Alliance officers warbled and screeched with the noise of death and pain. A confused mix of orders, admonitions, swears, prayers, and sounds of chewing squelched out of the Alliance open comms in an unreal symphony of human suffering and confusion, "People are dying!"

The Alliance security officers looked at each other unsure of themselves, they had to know how much trouble their station was currently facing even if they didn't understand exactly what the trouble was. He doubted they'd ever genuinely seen combat, a couple of minor dust ups perhaps but if they did decide to attack he may have to fight his way through them.

Fortunately for them, the decision was taken out of his hands.

"Let them through," Mr. Garibaldi strode into the customs area, his face contorted as though drinking spoiled milk at having said the words. The security officers seemed unconvinced but obeyed the order, lowering their firearms.

"Mr. Garibaldi," Tuul chuckled, "It pleases me too see you again, though I wish the circumstances were more prosperous."

"If they were I wouldn't have to be dealing with you at all tin man, certainly not the sweetheart brigade behind you," Mr. Garibaldi turned on his heel and started walking at a brusque pace, the black ceramics of his ribbed combat armor surprisingly flexible for their density. Tuul followed him stride for stride, motioning for his retinue to follow with an idle mechandrite.

"What is your current tactical situation?" Tuul twisted to the left, avoiding a Markab carrying two heavy bags laden with possessions. Strange objects at that but the objects refugees determined to be necessary for their escape rarely were decided upon in any rational way.

"The current tactical situation is that your demon has taken up shop in the habitation blocks of the ship and is conducting hit and run attacks everywhere at once. And he seems to have brought friends, though reports are unclear on the how and why," Mr. Garibaldi grabbed a heavy rifle offered to him by a subordinate and twisted its energy feed to fully automatic, "We've been getting to problem areas in just enough time to see it running away when we try to shoot it. We can't seem to tempt it into an area where we can deal with it."

"Mr. Garibaldi a demon is not simply some creature you can corral and deal with like some sort of rabid dog, they're clever even at the worst of times. And what tempts a demon you must never give it," sacrifices and pacts could be used to engage and command a demon but never without a steep price. Those who would willingly summon demons were doomed to one day bind themselves to one of the four great patron gods of the forsaken.

"If you have a better idea I'm willing to hear it," Garibaldi.

Finally, they were getting somewhere productive. Tuul snapped his fingers twice and motioned to Abbas. The boy pulled a long scroll of parchment from his robes and passed it to Tuul's outstretched hand, "Mr. Garbaldi, how much salt can you acquire and how quickly can you get it into the docking bay we loaded supplies from?"

"Salt?" Mr. Garibaldi raised an eyebrow incredulously, mouthing the word as though he'd never encountered it in his life, "I suppose we could get a couple hundred pounds of it out of storage in blue sector... but why do you need salt?"

"For some form of banishing ritual I presume. The Inquisitor's instructions were highly specific on 'what' but substantially less so on 'how' or 'why'," Tuul shrugged, the heavy arms of his harness heaving in polite incomprehension. The balding man eyed the massive servo arms with abject suspicion, his misgivings about having the armed Imperials transparently painted on his face. Best to give him something else to think about, "Mr. Garibaldi I am not, nor do I claim to be an expert on demonic lore. The Inquisitor _is_ and he says we bloody well need salt."

"Sir," one of the security officers, a bubbly woman who couldn't possibly be over the age of twenty five, sprinted over to Mr. Garibaldi with a data pad clutched in her hands. The pad creaked audibly in the woman's hand's in spite of her near hysteria, "The men we lost... the ones who died... they're... that is to say that..."

"Stop. Take a moment and tell me what is going on in full sentences,"Mr. Garibaldi rose a single finger into the air warningly and waved it twice in an effortless show of authority, silencing her. His face bore the picture of patient consternation. If Tuul did not know better he would have sworn Sáclair and Garibaldi were distant cousins, they both held that same unspoken air of authority.

The woman swallowed and looked at Garibaldi in utter disbelief, "I checked the reports sir. It's the same all over the station. The dead sir, they're... well they're not staying that way.

"What way," Tuul groaned, already guessing the answer.

"Dead," she finished breathlessly. "The dead are changing into something, something terrible... something wrong... something hungry..."

"It would be best to get that salt sooner Mr. Garibaldi," Tuul droned as the sounds of screams echoed through the station's comms, "I don't think there is going to be a later."

* * *

The breaching pods burst through the side of the ship with a thunderous burst of force and smoke, sending a plates of thick hull careening across the corridor to smash into the adjacent wall. The thunderous noise of stoping hob nailed boots rushed into the shadowy hallway, marching in synchronized incursion.

Sergeant Andrew Matthews chewed the unlit cigar between his lips nervously in the flickering darkness as the squads reported in. Sixty Alliance marines, all ready and raring to go.

Reporting in to Captain Sheridan was impossible, the comms were jammed with too many frenzied screams. So much so, in fact, that he'd ordered his squads to use squad comms only. There was no reason to give their enemy more of a psychological advantage than it already had.

His stomach jerked as his scouts reported in one by one, each reporting more death and destruction than the last. Whatever the thing they were facing was, it seemed to be waging a full psi-ops blitzkrieg. Defiled bodies, darkness, and bloody entrails were everywhere. A pile of corpses with basketball sized holes where their hearts should be blocked access to the nearest lift tube entirely, the doors opening and closing confusedly on the seeping cadavers. Andrew bit down hard on his cigar, nearly severing it in two, when he realized how small some of the bodies were.

"Madre de Dios," swore PFC Mendez, "What kind of a sick hijo de puta does this to children?"

"I don't know," Andrew growled, "But I damn well plan to make them pay. Gropos move out! We've got a monster to kill. _Hu-rah!_"

"_Hu-ah," _chanted the GROPOS in reply as they followed Andrew's lead. It was slow going in the darkness, the creature had apparently destroyed a number of power stations on ship, disabling transportation and life support systems on entire sections of the ship. A few incoherently sobbing technicians huddled back into corners of the hallway, gibbering incoherently as they tried to rub the blood and filth from their faces.

"Grab that one," Andrew pointed to the least insane looking technician, a glassy eyed woman with a shocking mess of red hair. She put up very little resistance as one of the GROPOS helped her to her feet and near carried her over to Andrew. The woman, Ellen Paige according to her uniform, made no effort to look Sgt. Matthews in the eye.

"What happened here," Andrew turned the woman's face to look at him with a gentle hand, staring into her terrified eyes, "Ensign Paige, what happened here?"

At hearing her rank the woman started speaking in a dull monotone, apparently unaware of her surroundings or the cluster of marines surrounding her in a protective phalanx. He recognized the signs of shell shock, Ensign Paige would probably never recover entirely. He didn't want to force the poor woman to relive her trauma but any information the woman had at all was needed, "At 10:15 hours a team responded to an automated report of power failure in the lighting systems red seven. They never made it. At approximately 10:30 hours they were ambushed by the creature. At 10:35 hours the creature killed all members of the team and moved on."

"_You_ survived," Damn, the woman had been more affected by the attack than he assumed. There were at least five technicians moving within view. The poor woman's wits had been addled, "_You _survived and I promise I won't let you die."

"No," the woman's monotone gave way into giddy laughter, girlish and insane, "There is not escape, no survival, no freedom only death, death and hunger."

"No té preocupes mi linda," PFC Mendez put a comforting hand on the woman's shoulder, "You're safe." Mendez never could bear to see a woman in pain, Andrew had seen him involve himself in things that were none of his damn business because of a skirt with a sob story time and time again.

"No.. no... no... no... no!" The woman screamed, falling to her knees and clawing at her face, "You have to kill me. Please kill me before it happens, before I become one of them."

"Nobody is killing anybody you daft woman," Andrew backed away as the woman reached for his gun hopefully, trying to point the barrel at her head. Survivors guilt often set in after a traumatic event but he'd never seen it set in this quickly and severely.

"Hunger," the woman bent over into the fetal position and started shaking violently, "So much hunger... so much pain..."

"We need a medic!" Andrew turned his back on the woman as PFC Mendez bent over next to her, checking her pulse. He only took his eyes off the woman for a second. Truly it was only a second. But it would be a second that would haunt the rest of his life.

It was Mendez's surprised squeals of pain that caught his attention and got him to turn back to face the woman's disjointed and elongated maw, fangs still dripping with the remains of Mendez's throat. The PFC still looked at the woman with betrayed fear and confusion as he died, clearly unsure what had even happened.

The woman moved with a shambling and stiff armed pace that belied her speed as she launched herself at Andrew, closing the distance between them and reaching for his rifle with shaking fingers. Andrew didn't need to think about the situation twice. He fired and filled the hallway with the scent of charred meat, savory and unnatural, as the creature wearing Ellen's skin fell to the ground in death.

"Jesus," swore Private Mitchell, "She just... changed... what in the hell just happened?"

"I don't know," Andrews shot the corpse twice for good measure, turning off the safeties on his rifle and charring her face to ash, "But I think this is just the beginning."

The corridor echoed with the agonized groans and whimpers of the recent dead. Marines yelled in horror and confusion, firing wildly as the corpses along the corridor came to life. Clammy dead hands and gaping fanged maws ripped and tore at the legs of the marines, struggling to drag them down into the hungering dead.

Andrew beat a Drazi missing half it's head away from himself with the butt of his gun before blasting the chest of an armless Minbari taking a bite out of Private Daniel's leg. He shot, shot, and shot again, "Deactivate weapons safeties! Weapons at max power. Burn a power cap if you have to!"

His marines were hardly listening though, the corridor was a fearsome melee of rife butts and small arms fire between the GROPOS and the living dead. Most soldiers dared not fire in such close quarters for fear of friendly fire, and those who did were doing so with mixed success.

"Aaaannndddrreewww," gurgled a psychotically melodic latin drawl from his left. Andrew's eyes widened at he turned in horror to face Mendez's dead body. Blood seeped out of Mendez's open wound even as the flesh gurgled and transmogrified into something inhuman, a great yellow eye pushing it's way up and out of his esophagus, burning with an incandescent yellow glow. Little spikes pushed their way out of his skin, leaving wounds that seeped clear green blood and orange smoke, "We aren't done Aaaannddreeww."

"No," Andrew swore, "You aren't real. This isn't happening."

"Oh, that's adorable. You're negotiating with us," The creature wearing Mendez's flesh mewled as it blurred forwards, slicing down with a long scythed talon. Andrews blocked the swipe with his rifle. The weapon burst in a blinding shower of white hot sparks that sizzled on his heat dissapating armor. The creature crowed in pain but swiped a second time, overshooting and giving Andrew a brief chance roll out of the way.

"Die!" Screamed Private Daniels as he fired his rife into the creature's center mass. The plasma shots rolled over the creature and dissolved into nothingness. Daniels shouldered his rifle to fire a second volley, but fell to the ground in pain as a Markab bit into his Achilles tendon.

Andrew pulled his monomolecular combat knives from their sheaths, blocking Mendez's razor sharp uppercut and cutting off a hand at the wrist, though to little effect. Mendez punched hard with his stump into his open palm, seemingly pulling a new hand from the wispy entrails bloodied stump.

The creature smiled in self satisfaction as it kicked Andrew's legs out from under him and raised its taloned fingers for the death strike, only to scream in agony as a three foot saber bisected it from head to groin. The halves fell away and burst in a puff of flame and ashes, leaving only bleached bones.

His savior helped him to his feet as small army of knife wielding Drazi flooded the corridor, stabbing and cutting at the recently risen corpses, turning the tide of battle. The blade hummed with energy as the tall man shook ichorous blood from it, a near pornographic look of satisfaction playing on his face.

"Inquisitor Daul," Andrew cleared his throat nervously as he looked at the three humans behind Hilder, trying to place faces with names. The first, the Inquisitor's bodyguard and servant, wasn't hard to recognize. One did not often fail to identify a two meter man with mechanical tentacles, however as to the other two he couldn't even hazard a guess.

Andrew fired a blistering shot into the groin of a charging Minbari, bursting the dead things legs and leaving to it flop helplessly on the ground, "You're taller than you look in your photos."

"Most people look short when they stand next to an Ogryn," The skull faced man grabbed a plasma rife from one of the dead marines at passed it to Andrew before striding down the corridor lopping the heads off of corpses, "Amis are we heading in the right direction?"

A jittery looking man wearing ragged clothing stumbled forwards, a hungry pleading look in his eyes. In any other situation Andrew would have found the man off-putting but he didn't have a spare ounce of energy to devote to considering the matter. Amis, a man of the Earth Alliance judging by his accent, stretched pinched his cheeks inward pulling thumb and forefinger towards his lips in concentration. He cocked his head like a confused spaniel and whimpered, "It's hiding... there is something that it fears on this station... someone it fears."

"Me?" The Inquisitor said in a reticent voice as he stabbed legless Drazi torso, severing the head cleanly from the neck in two sweeps of his blade. The festering corpse dissolved into ashes and bleached bone, the powers that brought it back from death severed from its body.

"It isn't that clear," Amis shook his head and backed behind the massive form of Cairn, "I only get flashes, sparks, I thought I was crazy till this week..." He eyed the massive cyborg, "I'm still not sure this isn't just another hallucination."

"There are perks to madness I suppose," The Inquisitor chewed his lip and lifted one of the bleached bones with the blade of his sword, staring at a sigil burned into the bone, "Damnit, Tzeench. It had to be the Throne cursed God of Sorcery."

The Inquisitor tossed the skull to the floor, shattering it into powder and looked up at the Marine, "You need to take your men and get to the habituation blocks and fallout shelters by now the creature has doubtless started feeding to grow its armies. The Drazi will assist you."

"I don't take orders from you," Andrews glared hatefully at the Inquisitor, his gratitude for his own life warring with the memories of his dead subordinates, "And I have not intention of giving you free reign on this ship."

The Inquisitor waved a small wedge between his fingers and tossed it underhand at Andrews, the burnished metal sailed through the air. Andrew caught it and stared in astonishment at a command level communications link, a link the Inquisitor had obviously stolen. The older man smiled wrily and quirked one side of his lips, "If Mr. Garibaldi's furious questions about 'Why in the hell you burned through his hull?' are to be trusted you have a great deal of difficulty obeying anyone's orders. No, you will go to those habitation blocks and you will allow me to go on as I planned."

"Why in the bowels of hell would I do that?" Andrew's knew damn well why he wouldn't. His reason was two meters tall, covered in more electronics than a Hyperion Cruiser. He didn't care to scrap with the Skitarii, not without a high powered rifle and a half mile of open ground between them, especially not with a few dozen Drazi surrounding his boys.

"Because I asked nicely," The Inquisitor smiled sweetly enough to put the sour taste of insincerity in Andrew's mouth, "And because if you want this station to stay in one piece we must work together. We can work together or we can die. Your choice soldier, you want to start throwing punches at me or do you want to save the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians on this station."

The Inquisitor did not spare a second glance for the Alliance Marines as he turned on his heel and strode down an adjoining corridor to Red Sector, taking his retinue of Imperials with him. It would have been all too easy to just shoot the man in the back of the head. There were days when Andrew hated making the right decision, "Come on GROPOS, it's time to be big damn heroes. Lets save some civies."

* * *

Stephen had been extremely careful to make sure his patients would have a safe place to retreat to at the first signs of trouble, commandeering the recovering Zack Allan and a number of other security personnel to protect the red sector sickbay from anything that might come their way.

Of course it hadn't occurred to him that the attack could come from inside the sickbay rather than from one of the barricades outside it. It had been a sheer stroke of luck that they weren't being overwhelmed by the furiously screaming monsters in the room beyond. Nurse Vivian's decision to sneak a smoke in the morgue may well have saved the lives of everyone in medbay C.

The terrified woman's death screams roused the Galut from his chemically induced sleep. By the time Stephen responded to the screaming, Galut had already torn his bed from where it was bolted to the floor and plugged the door to the morgue with it, holding it in place with his substantial bulk. Clawed fingers and long tentacles tore at the steel bench, perforating it and occasionally eliciting pained whimpers from the Ogryn,"Get out Doc!"

"We have a security breach in the ICU," Screamed doctor Franklin as what had once been a Vree swiped a taloned hand past the makeshift barricade, tearing a sizable hunk out of of the Ogryn's belly. Thick black blood soaked the Ogryn's pressure suit and stained the stuffed rabbit tucked into his belt, "I need you here _now_ Zack."

Stephen rushed into his office looking a compression coil of dermal sealant foam only to loose his footing and stumble over a child's toy car, clipping his head on his bookshelf. It was amazing how much a concussion really hurt. He blinked stars out of his eyes and stared into the accusing tear streaked face of a six year old Brakiri holding a now broken toy car.

The daycare center, he'd forgotten about the daycare center.

Many children who'd lost their parents in the confusion of what was going on and simply wandered to the nearest safe place. Because the Stephen wouldn't be able to determine who their parents were until things calmed down he'd put the children into his office and set Miranda to the task of keeping them occupied and happy. A task that seemed to please both Miranda and the children greatly if the smiling children balanced on each of her knees was any indication.

"Really Stephen, say you're sorry to Kekleth. Peter just gave him that car as a present," Miranda stood up, placing each of the children from her knees to the ground, and walked over to the sobbing Brakiri. She hugged the child and wiped the tears from his eyes. Her smile went away after getting a good look at the grave look on Stephen's face, "What's wrong?"

"Get those children out of here!" Stephen hefted a chubby cheeked Minbari five year old not even old enough to have grown his first crest of bone and did his best to herd the nervous children in the direction of the door, "We're under attack!"

"I want my mommy," cried an eight year old girl with her dirty blonde hair up in pigtails, "I want my mommy."

"We'll find your mommy sweetheart," cooed Miranda soothingly rubbing the girl's back and pushed her towards the door, "Just come with us and it will be all okay. We're all going to play a game, now I want all of you to close your eyes real tight and grab each other's hands! Everybody get a buddy."

"I don't want a buddy," sulked Kekleth looking at Stephen spitefully, "And I'm not going with him."

"Not even if he promises to show you a magic trick?" Stephen grabbed a cylinder of dermal sealant off his shelf and rolled it around his fingers spinning it faster and faster till it appeared to be floating on his fingertips. Kekleth nodded eagerly and grabbed Stephen's pant-leg, the toy car apparently forgotten.

It was a simple surgical dexterity exercise but children loved to watch it. Stephen would have to remember to send a nice letter to Dr. Keller from Mar's General's Pediatrics Ward for teaching it to him. Provided of course, that he lived long enough to write a letter.

"Ok guys remember, eyes closed!" Miranda got behind the group and hurried them forwards, shepherding the children across the surgical ward and away from the morgue. The children fled the screeching and wailing from inside the morgue, none of them particularly eager find out what was causing them.

"Aarrgghhh!" Galut screamed in pain a makeshift spear made from a length of metal pipe burst through the table and into his shoulder, thick arterial blood leaking out from his neck. The Ogryn staggered back in pain letting go of his barricade. A risen human, misshapen and covered in blue feathered quills rushed into the room only to fall to the ground dead as Galut grabbed the human's head and crushed it like a ripe cantaloupe.

The human dissolved into ash, prompting the Brakiri child to start wailing a furious high pitched screech. On Barkir it would have brought every mother for two miles running to the scared child's aid. In the sick bay all it did was hurt Stephen's ears as he rushed the children out of the door.

Stephen shut the door and smashed the control panel, nobody would be opening it from the morgue side. Rough hands tossed him to the floor, knocking the wind out of him. What had once been a Minbari stared at him with hateful eyes as it licked the lips of it's severely dislocated jaw. It gurgled in what might have been a taunt as it picked up a bone saw in one of its translucent and scaly fingers then fell to its knees as a two foot long pipe sailed across the room and smashed its brains to mush, turning the body to ashes and bone.

"No! You no hurt!," bellowed Galut, groaning from the effort of fighting the six reanimated corpses biting and clawing at his back an sides bled badly from where he'd ripped the spear out of his neck. He grabbed a Vree by the wrists and kicked forcefully into the creature's center mass, detaching the creature's arms from it's torso and pulping it's chest upon the ground.

Galut howled piteously as a markab bit into his finger, tearing off the fifth distal phalanges and swallowing it whole. The grinning markab squeaked and crowed in a disturbing reverberating parody of English dancing out of Galut's reach, "Fresh, fresh, wonderful flesh!"

Galut squealed like a stuck pig, sobbing in fury when the pug nosed Minbari slashed his back with a scalpel, driving a fistful of the blades into the back of Galut's skull. The pug nosed Minbari earned an impromptu disembowelment for his efforts from the highly illegal combat knife, a machete in anyone elses hand, the Ogryn pulled from his boot, "For the Emperor!"

The Ogryn's efforts grew increasingly sluggish as the creatures tore at him. It was like watching hounds take down a bear, no matter how many dogs the bear killed eventually the bear would grow tired and the hounds would feast. There hadn't been many corpses in the morgue, at least not many who had not been placed in stasis for sanitary purposes, but the dozen or so undead were easily overwhelming the Ogryn.

Galut was losing.

Stephen couldn't let these _things_ get the better of him and he damn well wasn't about to let them feast on a patient in his care. He ran to the center of the room and tore a laser saw from where it sat in the ceiling, ripping the safeties out of the surgical laser's focusing chamber. It was a delicate piece of technology, designed for orthopedic surgery not battle, but without a charge limiter it was deadly.

"Galut, get down!" Stephen bellowed as he pulled back on the manual throttle for the charge capacitor, wincing as the delicate machinery sputtered and sparked in protest to his harsh treatment of it. The Ogryn, apparently long used to strange battlefield commands, dropped to the floor, taking special care to cover his kidneys and stomach with his arms. Stephen pressed the laser's firing stud and swept across the room. The laser's beam, no wider than a pencil, sliced a long line across the room, scoring the thick metal plating of the wall and bisecting anything between.

Three sweeps of the beam and the now headless corpses fell to the ground, dissolving to dust. Blood pounded in his ears deafeningly. Stephen tossed the laser to the floor in disgust, guilt pouding in his ears. He'd killed them, killed them without a second thought.

His introspection took a backseat to his medical duties as Galut sobbed in obvious pain.

Stephen grabbed the dermal sealant from his belt and rushed over to the prostrate Ogryn. Galut's face was a mess of small lacerations and abrasions from claws and fingernails and his breath was ragged but his face wore as wide of a smile as Stephen had ever seen, "We won?"

"Yes Galut, we won," Stephen pulled out a pair of scissors and started cutting the thick mylar fabric of the pressure suit, the Ogryn smelled like a mix of rotting garbage and dead things but he couldn't treat a wound he couldn't see, "Now its time for you to rest."

"Kids ok?" Galut tried to stand up but flopped back down after putting too much pressure on his injured hand. Galut truly intended to work himself to death if it meant protecting someone else. Stephen wondered if it was a trait of Galut's entire species or purely of Galut, the possibility that a sentient species wholly devoted to the protection of others might exist was greatly heartening.

"We can check on them together once you let me patch your wounds," Stephen rubbed isopropyl alcohol across Galut's wound with a cotton ball, streaks of green black filth rubbed away revealing long seeping pink puckers of perforated flesh. The dermal generator hissed satisfyingly as it left cool white smears of foam in the wounds, forming artificial scabs.

Galut giggled in fascination as the foam bubbles sunk and hardened into a rubbery substance within the wounds, poking at the aniseptic material of the artificial scabs with brawny digits. The foam would slowly dissolve as the Ogryn's body healed, leaving only pink scar tissue where the gaping wounds had been, but not if he tore them out playing with them.

"If you keep touching them they're going to open up again," Stephen swatted the Ogryn's hand. The Ogryn flopped back on the ground breathing heavily, too tired to resist Stephen's doctoring, "No fidgeting, you hear me? No fidgeting."

The Ogryn grunted a grudging affirmative in his native tongue, closed his eyes, and hummed to himself in a charming disharmonious attempt at music. It was a nasal and throaty gargled hymn of some sort, vaguely latin sounding, that could have curdled milk. The Orgyn continued his horrible approximations to music until the door opened and Zack burst into the room with a two man security team.

"Ok boys, check the room," Zack nodded to the security guards. The pair crept along the wall, training their guns on the bones and the morgue doors respectively, a process that Galut seemed to find equal parts incomprehensible and hilarious. After ten minutes of nervous searching Zach declared the room to be clear and told his men to wait outside the room.

"You're late Mr. Allan," Stephen snapped harshly, his voice a measured mix of cool professional disapproval and clinical fury. It was a talent that one learned in med school, though not in any classes. As a doctor one often needed to express stern disapproval in a direct manner without resorting to shouting or unprofessional language. It always seemed strange to Stephen that ten minutes quiet disapproval was often more effective than ten hours of shouting.

"Doc, we've been under siege. I came as quick as I could but they freaking massed at the door. It was all we could do to keep them from crossing the barricades," Zack's voice shook and his boyish smile diminished from its usual sparkle, "We lost Blevins, Cohen and Turrow as well as a group of civilians who were trying to make it to a safe zone... they got them... then we got them when they became them..."

Damn that was all Zack needed. Someone else to blame himself for not being able to save. Under normal circumstances Stephen would have ordered Zack into counseling and two weeks off duty. It was unfair of him to allow Zack onto active duty after losing his partner, but there wasn't much choice. They needed every able body.

"If I'd heard it from somebody without seeing it with my own eyes I'd have written 'corpses coming to life' as a story someone who'd spent too much time in deep space would come up with," Stephen shook his head as he washed his hands in near scalding water at the sink, cleaning the Ogryn's blood from his hands. It left pink stains on the steel basin, apparently the chemical composition of Ogryn blood was different from than that of a normal human, "Are we any closer to winning?"

"It's hard to tell," Zack chewed his lip hard, "The reports over the link aren't exactly full of useful information at the moment. I'm not even sure who is really giving information and who's been turned and is leading people into traps."

"No worry," Galut rocked back and forwards on his bottom, his knees grasped in each hand, giggling amusedly, "Inquisitor have plan. Bossman always have a good plan."

"I wish I shared your confidence Galut," Stephen smiled kindly. It wouldn't do any good to tell the Ogryn that his master was in an Alliance cell. It would only upset the giant.

"Uh... I hope he's right... because the last update we got from the chief seemed to indicate that there were big plans in the works and that the Inquisitor figured in as a big part of them," Zack shrugged dismissively at Stephens look of utter incredulity, "Hey don't ask me how or what, its above my pay grade."

"How exactly is the Inquisitor supposed to arrange anything from his current... accommodations?" Stephen hedged around the issue, taking care to use a euphamisim that the Ogryn probably hadn't learned yet. The Ogryn wasn't dumb but his English was still quite limited, "Garibaldi is very thorough in keeping his guests entertained."

"Shiro got brought in right before the raid, knocked six ways from sunday. Hilder decided he was checking out," Zack tossed his hands up in the air in disgust, "And because the Chief said 'hands off', 'hands off' we are. Shiro is furious but he isn't about to go against the chief."

"Just as good," Galut nodded sagely, "If Alliance keep Hilder in prison cell Galut have to beat heads till they let him out. Galut not want to do that."

"No, neither do I" Stephen sighed, feeling distinctly absurd for having tried to talk around the Ogryn. Rule number one of xenology, just because someone doesn't see things the same way you do doesn't make them dumber. It was an easy rule to remember. It was an even easier rule to forget, "Come on big guy, lets get you some Jello. You earned it."

* * *

Delenn followed Vira'capac as closely as she dared, following the Kroot through restricted passageways and corridors of the station she'd never even known to exist. After the abject failures of the first four Babylons the Earth Alliance had been hesitant to fund the fifth station as generously. Sections, sometimes entire sectors of the station were walled up and left unfinished in order to meet the self imposed deadline. The one they crawled through had apprently been a incomplete markeing district.

How the Kroot had come to discover such a section of ship was beyond her ken. Of the Imperials the Kroot was the most enigmatic and curious of them. Other than the pak'ma'ra the Kroot rarely had met with anyone on the station, choosing shadows and solitude over socialization.

"Where are we going?" hissed one of the gaggle of human psychics that Delenn had taken custody of in the kerfuffle, a boy of about twenty years with a small patch of stubble on his chin. Her eyes could just see the outline of his wild hair and small glasses in the cloying darkness of the maintenance corridor.

"Where we need to be," the Kroot answered enigmatically. Delenn shook her head in amusement, the Kroot spoke few words and wasted none of them. He was as insufferably enigmatic as any Vorlon even if he was more direct than Kosh had ever been.

"I think he was hoping for a more specific answer than that Vira'capac," Delenn ventured in an effort at diplomacy. The bedraggled psychics were more than scared enough without adding in an extra element of confusion. Scared people made hasty decisions, and hasty decisions would get people killed. Delenn knew enough about the Psi Corps to know that these people had more than sufficient justification to be afraid for their own lives even without the addition of dark one.

"People hope for many things," Vira'capac trilled eagerly as the hurried pattering sounds of taloned paws thundered along the tight corridor. A pair of dark forms rushed out from the shadows, crowing and howling eagerly, "Few get what they wish for, at least not exactly when they expect to get it.

Delenn raised her quarterstaff defensively but relaxed as she got a better view of the two creatures. They were the hound-like infant Kroot he'd arrived with. Presumably Vira'capac stowed his children in the maintenance corridor for safe keeping while he'd come to kill the psychics. The infant Kroot hounds nuzzled up against their parent eagerly, snuffling and snapping at him lovingly. They crooned to each other in a sing song language of twitters and clicks, eager to have been reunited.

"We came all this way for some freaking mutts?" Hissed a furious Englishman in confusion before one of his fellow psychic fugitives whispered into his ear, doubtlessly explaining what little was known of the Kroot metamorphic cycle from youth to adulthood. The Englisman's face colored and he sputtered, "I mean... they're lovely..."

"Vira'capac's mutts." Snarled Vira'capac furiously as he ran a hand through the hound's quills, ruffling the scaly hide of their backs in a pleasant way, "Very may well be the only reason that are still breathing. Human think that it accident no warp risen in the path? Hounds hunt the path so that silly mindwalkers may whinge about survival while innards still on insides."

"You sent your children to fight those things?" Mr. Cotto asked incredulously, his pudgy wobbles of flesh were just visible in the dull light of the corridor. The man was greatly flustered, but no more so than was usual for someone working in Ambassador Mollari's employ.

"They are Kroot," Vira'capac crooned, the skin at the edge of his beak twitching in amusement, shuffling feathery quills back and forth. His hounds snuggled his legs playfully carfree and not looking the least bit capable of killing anything, "Kroot not fear death."

"If its all the same to you I do," Delenn rapped the quarterstaff on the ground nervously, examining the dark red liquid on the hound's beaks as her eyes adjusted to the light, "I'd prefer not staying in one place too long."

"Yes... yes," clicked Vira'capac excitedly his long rows of quills quivering in excitement. Little bones and metal keepsakes clicked together with each undulating twitch, "Must stay predators to not be prey. Come we go onwards."

Delenn could not say how long they traveled in the maintenance corridors following the outline of Vira'capac. The Kroot moved with neither urgency nor unease, ducking under pipes and swinging over obstructions. His lithe serpentine form was far more developed for the close quarters and lack of light than either Delenn, Vir, or the humans. He stood beyond each hazard nuzzling his hounds, tapping his foot impatiently and muttering in a twittering warble about "foolish man things."

It was slow going at the best of times. The young humans were ill suited for this sort of travel, having spent most of their lives in a relatively sedentary lifestyle. The youngest girl had to be carried upon someone's shoulders more than once when her legs were too tired to keep walking.

It was painful to be around displaced humans. There were too many memories of having ordered the wholesale slaughter of human colonies for her to much like such close proximity to human suffering.

The greatest regret of Delenn's life was having cast the deciding vote to go to war with Earth. Her grief at the loss of her teacher and mentor blinded her common sense and set her people on a dark path that perhaps the universe might never forgive her for having committed. Her decision to bind herself to the humans by making herself a peace offering to them was in no small part born of her own guilt.

She had loved her mentor, she had loved him more than one was supposed to love their mentor and teacher. It was not a love that ever would have come to anything. Dukhat certainly wouldn't have allowed himself the luxury of such attachments but when one is young and in love such logical considerations do not come into play. The man she loved died clutched in her arms, and she'd lashed out.

So she'd cried out for blood. And blood she had gotten in spades. It had not brought her peace in the end. No, as it so often was, her blood lust of the moment became the greatest mistake of her life.

She could never take back the lives lost, as much as she desired to, but she could do all that was in her power to make sure that nothing like this happened again between the shared souls of their people. For humans were born of Minbari souls and Minbari spirits. To kill them lessened the whole and made the Minbari less than who they were. Minbari did not kill Minbari, nor should they kill humans.

Sadly humans had no such compunctions in causing suffering to their own. But with the help of her people they would outgrow that in time. It was the way of things, time healed all woulds and all races could reach enlightenment given guidance. Perhaps through helping the humans find themselves she might find absolution for her own sins, perhaps even find the energy to forgive herself.

"Ambassador Delenn," Mr. Cotto rested a hand on her arm, waking her from her introspection, "We need to keep going Ambassador Delenn. Vira'capac says we're almost there."

"Yes Mr. Cotto," she sighed, looking at Vir fondly. If anyone stood for the redemption of their people it was Vir. The roly poly Centauri was free of the malice or pretensions that plagued so much of Centauri society and prevented them from advancing as a people, "It is time to move forward."

At the end of a particularly narrow and cramped corridor Vira'capac wedged himself between a pipe and an access panel, pushing hard with his powerful bony legs, tendons creaking and groaning with exertion. The panel gave way and fell into the room beyond with a resounding clang, the hounds rushing forward into the now open air with lolling tongues and unbridled enthusiasm.

"Now are here," Vira'capac crooned with laughter and leapt out into the space beyond, dropping to the ground below, "Come man things!"

Delenn jumped through the opening and landed badly on her already injured ankle, crying out in pain. She teetered after her bad landing, nearly falling to the ground but found herself clutched in the firm hands of Mr. Garibaldi. The balding man chuckled in relief, "Good of you to join us Ambassador. You're just in time for the party."

* * *

Maxine's was exactly the sort of shop that John loathed having on his station. Tacky, oppressively multicolored, and filled with the sorts of tourist kitsch that cheapened the power and majesty of the station. It sold cheaply made overpriced keepsakes to humans and aliens too inexperienced to tell the difference between quality goods and useless junk.

It was, however, full to the brim with cover and various mirrored surfaces that made it difficult to pinpoint his exact location and easy to view the locations of his attackers. That taking cover inside of it gave him a good reason to destroy that insufferably cute bust of his own head made from macaroni that Maxine Deveroux kept in a glass case was nothing more than an added bonus.

A deeply, deeply satisfying bonus.

John swore as a burst of blistering heat shot past his face, reducing the chair he'd been using for cover only moments ago into a smoldering ruin of wood and imitation leather. He tumbled past an overstuffed sofa and into a display of tacky snow-globes advertising tourist destinations around the universe, "Great, they're using guns now."

"I think the longer they're active the more conscious they become," Talia shouted back to him from behind an aquarium full of stuffed bears, "I'm feeling more concrete ideas, more complex thoughts coming from them."

"Any chance we're going to get out of this by negotiating," John pulled a stun grenade from his belt and lobbed it into the hallway, plugging his ears with his fingers and squinting his eyes shut as tight as he could manage. Several ghoulish voices howled as the grenade popped in a furious snap-bang of magnesium and ammonia, helplessly blind and deaf. John got one of them at the knees, searing its ligaments to putty, before ducking back into safety.

"I don't think so," Talia retched and coughed up bile, "These things are monsters. They feel hunger and hatred and not much else."

"Perfect," John eyed the readout on his phased plasma pistol in disgust, seven shots left. He'd burned through his phased plasma rifle in the innitual ambush that killed the five security officers escorting Talia and him to the brig. The same security officers, he noted bitterly, that now clutched their blind eyes with long taloned fingers, "Why haven't they just killed us yet? There are twenty of them out there, they could easily have taken us hours ago."

"They're waiting for something... something that they fear more than they hunger for flesh," the teddy bears in the aquarium flailed around as Talia shuddered in fear, her voice shaking terribly, "There is... something coming... I think... I think it might be the demon..."

"What?" John hissed in fury, "Here? Now?"

"Captain... I think we need to be elsewhere as soon as we possibly can," Talia's normal cool composure cracked with terror, her own psychic gifts granting her insights that John did not care to share, "I don't want to be here when it gets here."

"I'm open for suggestions if you have one. Because fifteen PPG shots and a single grenade between us aren't going to be enough to get us out of here even without a demon," John rubbed the cross around his neck nervously. His mother gave it to him as a gift, but he'd never particularly felt the need to wear it. His own studies of religion were done more out of love for his mother than faith in Christ. The closest he'd come to finding religion was a brief but obsessive bout with Buddhism after he met the Dali Lama at age twenty one.

But when faced with the very real possibility of fighting a demon the religious talisman was a great comfort. He looked up at the heavens and prayed, "Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven... An army of Angels sounds pretty fragging good about now but I'll take anything you can give me."

"John!" Talia hissed in horror, "It's here!"

Green flames licked and spat from bleeding lips chanting foul howling screams of agony as a creature of nightmare shambled towards Maxine's, a wave of fettid and caustic blood seeping from burning sores billowing dark shadows that waved with a red tinted venomous sheen. It's unnatural angles and twisted form belied the speed and power with which the creature moved, its own elegant grace only adding to its deep seated sense of wrongness.

The animated corpses melted down to nothingness as the creature passed them, piles of ichorous charnel that rolled across the floor and into the million gaping mouths of the creature. The reanimated dead howled piteously in ecstasy and sorrow, becoming part of that which had given them life to make it whole again. Each corpse regrew burning mouths and sealed blazing sores.

"Any time now," John eyed the heavens and pulled the cross from his shirt, wrapping the necklace around his wrist, "Just give me something, anything. I'll take anything at all."

John's ears rang and he cried out in pain as the creature opened the great fanged maw along its face and crowed, in sing song parody, its reverberating voice sounding of spoiled milk and tears. "Little witch, little witch, let me in!"

Talia snarled in fury, rolled out from cover and fired into the creature's face. Blue waves of heat rolled over the demon's puckered and seeping flesh breaking like water over its skin, utterly harmless. The creature laughed from its many mouths, a gleeful tittering mess of warbling joy, "Yes! Your anger, your fear, bring them! I will feast on them and grow stronger!"

"Oh you have to be kidding me!" Talia emptied her clip into the creature's equine head and grinning lips, sending searing bursts of blue energy to disappear into nothingness, "Shut up and die you sadistic monster."

The creature clicked its scythe like pincers in anticipation, coiling its body and launching itself at Talia in a taloned pillar of billowing smoke. Miss Winters shoved out with her hands, a pale blue glow sparkling and sputtering from her fingertips repelling the cloud with her force of will. The smoky and insubstantial form of the demon swirled and cut at the the iridescent dome of blue psychic energy coalescing around her. Pincers lashed at the dome clattering at it like nails on a chalkboard.

In a fit of desperation John tied his cross to one of his boot laces and swung the makeshift mace at the cloud of smoke. The cross cut into the smoke with a mordant lance of heat and brimstone, repelling the furious creature and forcing back into a corporeal form. Six furious sets of eyes glared at him, a million mouths foaming in fury, "You dare to attack me with a sigil of faith from a false god?"

The creature eyed the tiny sliver cross with dismissive contempt, but a long red welt of scar tissue ran down the creature's belly. John spun his cross in a around his head, forcing the demon back, "The power of Christ compels you, you frag headed son of a bitch! Get off of my station."

The creature eyed the glittering silver chain in disgust, staying just beyond it. John looked around, searching for a way out. He couldn't keep this up forever, his arm was already getting tired and the second he let up an extremely irate demon would be munching on his spleen. The creature paced around John and Talia like a nervous wild dog, growling and chittering as the billowing clouds of shadow bled from its seeping wounds and gibbering fanged mandibles.

Talia didn't give the beast a chance to recover, reaching out with her hand and flinging a bookshelf at him in an astonishing display of telekinesis. The bookshelf, heavily laden with the sort of tacky silver plated keepsakes one purchased on a long voyage collided with the demon with the force of a cannonball.

"Insolent witch!" Howled the creature as its many tiny maws screamed in fury, demanding blood and pain. It swatted at the silver objects in pain and disgust, unable to abide even the slightest touch of it on bare flesh, "I'll make you howl for me! I will re-define the meaning of the word pain!"

The demon howled and the very shape of the deck started to conform to the creatures will, deck plates and bulkheads splitting as taloned arms and clawing hands burst from them, grabbing and slashing at Talia's legs, dragging her to the ground. John smacked at the arms with his cross, beating them away as they ripped Talia's clothing and tried to choke the life out of her.

"Die, die, die, die, die, die, die," the demon whinnied in increasingly aroused moans of excitement.

A man dropped from the causeway above them in a billowing mass of coats and scrolls, landing on the awning of Maxine's and hopping off it with acrobatic grace. A glittering ark played through the sky as the man pulled a blade from its scabbard and activated its power supply, lightning playing up and down the blade.

"_Iperitor est Regis Deus Rex,_" screamed the man in furious voice before a driving a blade into the creature's spine, twisting upwards and continuing to chant in Gothic. The foul venomous blood of the creature rolled off of the man's rune laced clothing like water on an oilskin, dropping to dissolve the deck plates below.

God help him, John was glad to see Inquisitor Hilder.

The creature clipped the Inqusitor with a pincer, flinging him backwards into a display of postcards and knocking the wind out of him. The demon's concentration broken the summoned arms vanished into thin air, leaving a bedraggled but still breathing Talia clutching a wound on her side.

The ground shook violently as Cairn, the cyborg attendant of the Inquisitor, dropped to the ground. He carried a man in each arm with casual ease. He placed each man upon the ground gently before reaching inside of his own torso and tossing a pistol to John. Oh but it felt good to be armed.

The Imperial made pistol was heavier than his own PPG, and didn't seem to have been designed with any sort of stun setting, but when he pointed it at the demon and pulled the trigger it made a satisfying quarter sized hole in the creature's chest.

"Good of you to join us Inquisitor," John yelled as Hilder made a pass at the creature's many legs, slicing at the ankles and cutting at the monster's ligaments. The demon howled and made another sweep with a pincered arm only to have the pincer caught firmly in the long snaking mechanical tentacles of Cairn as the cyborg struggled to keep the creature in place.

"I would have come sooner," Hilder chuckled, "But I had a prior engagement with Mr. Garibaldi."

"Great, now how the hell do we kill this thing," John fired at a tentacle that had been going for Carin's unprotected midriff, frying it at the base and rendering it to ash. Another two seemed to form for every one he managed to destroy. Cairn screeched in pain, twisting his mechandrites with bone pulverizing strength.

"I don't know if we can," Daul pulled a scroll from his belt and tossed it to the wizened man with a shock of white hair. The old man caught it in aged fingers and unrolled it, looking at it with genuine wonder, "It's at least a fifth circle creature of the Inevitable path and I don't know it's true name. I'm not even sure if it can be killed."

"I'm not just giving up," John ducked as Thross flew over his head warbling in alarm, a long mechandrite severed midway down where the creature's pincers had sliced through the metal. The creature howled in victory and charged, only to come to a shuddering halt where the old man stood chanting off the scroll. The old man spoke the words passionate conviction, free of fear and full of faith. A filthy looking little man huddled behind the old man as though behind fortress wall.

"Shut up! Shut up! Lies and falsehoods! Your corpse is not here to serve you, he lies in what is not and may be, do not invoke his lies here," The demon howled and covered his ears, driving his spiked pincers into them and actually cutting the flesh away from his own head in order to puncture his ear drums and render himself deaf, "Your saints are all whores and fools who serve the dark lords in the afterlife. You are pitiful nothings that only life to further our great games. You will be mine, all of you, just like that pathetic shell of a man behind you."

Hilder ignored the demon's howling and threats of violence and pulled a round shape the size of an egg from his belt, "Of course we aren't giving up. We're just going to have to go about this the old fashioned way." He pressed a button on the egg and flung it at the creature. It shattered on contact with the demon's flesh, spreading a golden cloud of light over the creature's skin. The creature howled and hawed as it dissolved into a screaming cloud, disappearing into the ephemeral golden light.

"What the hell was that?" John approached the golden dust upon the ground uneasily, afraid to touch it. Would it dissolve him into oblivion as well? "What did you do?"

"That was the cremated remains of Saint Versnal of the Fifth Circle of Pelnar. Versnal's blessings ought to be enough to bind the creature for ten minutes or so, possibly less. Long enough for us to escape." Hilder grabbed the various silver objects upon the ground and piled them upon the ashes for good measure, "Come Captain there is no time to lose. If we are to banish this creature I will need the aid of both you and your pet psychic."

The pile of ashes shifted and howled as the demon tried to re-form itself into a corporeal body. Hilder swore and grabbed Talia, lifting her to her feet, "Blood of Horus, it's Third Circle. We must hurry I don't know if that binding will last for two minutes. Come Captain we have work to do."

* * *

A pin dropping in the great hall would have been as startling as a cannon shot. The crew walked on eggshells as Sáclair's black mood rolled off him in waves, palpable to even the dullest of crewmen. Even his servitor's seemed hesitant to approach him, servo skulls hovering further out of reach than was normal. Though Sáclair could be imagining the latter, it wasn't beyond belief.

The voices of the ancestors rumbled in his ears, arguing over the honor of duty and family ad nauseum. As usual separating his own emotions out from those of ten generations of captains was a brutal exercise in self reflection. How long ago had it been that Abbas had been a chubby cheeked babe playing at his feet with toy soldiers and ships?

God the boy had grown so fast. Not that he'd ever bothered to notice. Memories of ten generations of chubby cheeked Sáclair children played on his own memories of Abbas, superimposing their own mess of conflicted feelings to complicate his own.

No, his duties as a Captain were always more important to him than his children. He had wives and concubines to deal with such niggling details as raising his children. They knew he loved them of course, they would be foolish not to. Didn't he make every effort to provide for them? He spent his life improving their status within Imperial society and working for the redemption of their honor. It was a worthy cause.

Duty above all else.

Would Abbas think it was a worthy cause if he knew that his father's quest for honor may require the sacrifice of Abbas' very life. Sáclair stared at the timer upon his consul in disgust, watching the numbers slowly descend to the time when he would have to order the death of his own son.

"You make me a monster Hilder, you make me a monster without ever asking it," Sáclair whispered the words to nobody in particular, "You whisper and I come... what have I become in your name?"

"Sir," Mr. Enzo started nervously, "Are you sure about this? There is still time to send a shuttle full of the Lionhearts over to the station to get Abbas back. Danzig has already got a team lined up and ready to go. He knows the terrain and he's sure he can get in and get out with time to spare."

"No," the world tasted like ashes on Sáclair's tongue. It wasn't worth the risk of bringing a demon on the ship, "A demon could possess a Lionheart as easily as any other man."

Mr. Enzo choked on his own words, "Sáclair... you cannot seriously mean to..."

"I can and I do," Sáclair drank deeply from his glass, the welcoming burn of bringing him that much closer to the blissful point where he no longer had to listen to his own thoughts. It was hard to say who he hated more right now, Daul, Frist, the Demon, Abbas, or himself, "Move the ship into position and open the forward torpedo ports just in case."

"The Alliance ships will defend the station if we fire at it," Donat hedged nervously, "We've only got two hours before the Alliance relief fleet is due to arrive. If Navigator Illrich's assessments of the warp currents are to be trusted that means that we have a window of only two minutes to escape before the warp currents become... difficult."

"And an hour and forty minutes before we become fugitives from all the local governments, the long term implications of this haven't been lost on me Donat," hopefully their newly restored food stores would last them long enough to get them to somewhere in known space, or at least beyond the range of any Earth Alliance reprisals. Provided of course, that they would be able to fight their way past the relief fleet, "Let us not lose faith in Hilder just yet, he may yet save me from duty."

"Indeed," Donat tapped his data slate unconvinced speaking in his usual monotone, "Duty above all." The words sounded as hollow on Donat's lips as in his own head. But they were the only words that would guide him.

Though if they guided him to glory or damnation he could not say.

* * *

Abbas deliberately ignored Minbari Ambassador with all his might but there was an exotic and forbidden beauty about her that he couldn't shake from his mind. Such thoughts were the worst of sins but his mind kept straying to brunette curls hanging from elegant crests of bone. She'd come from Throne knew where with the Inquisitor's pet Kroot and a handful of unsanctioned psychics.

In the Empire they would have been lined up against a wall and shot like the dogs they were. Yet Tuul had swooped them up and used them without considering the matter for more than seconds. Putting them to work in completing some part of the ritual that was beyond the abilities of one who could touch the void. Disreputable xenos and heretics the lot of them.

Not one of them was worth a second though, not a one of them. Yet he'd had to steady his hands from shaking when Delenn had passed within inches of him with Mr. Garibaldi. He could swear he felt the heat of her as she passed him and could taste orchidaceous scents she left in the air, kicking his adolescent daydreams into overdrive.

"Do not trust the works of xenos," Abbas whispered to himself, "The devil appears to us in the form we find the most pleasing."

"Not this devil I suspect. Not if the reports are to be trusted," Tuul nearly scared Abbas out of his skin as the elder priest rested a cool metal hand on his shoulder in what Tuul seemed to have intended as a comforting manner. It was readily apparent that Tuul had abandoned the flesh for so long that such simple gestures weren't easy for him. His hand gripped Abbas' shoulder a bit more firmly than was necessary, giving more of an impression of control than comfort.

"No sir," Abbas nodded and hugged the heavy bag of sand in his arms closer to his chest, the rough burlap sack itched even through his already uncomfortable robes, "I guess not."

"Get your wits about you boy, we haven't time for you to lose yourself to fear or doubt. Those are the greatest weapons of the great enemy. Know that the Omnissiah is with you and all falls into place," Tuul droned on in cheerful monotone, though the man's optics focused unblinkingly upon the heavy doors anyone wishing to enter the docking bay would be forced to come through.

"I'm not afraid!" Protested Abbas vehemently. It wasn't a lie, he was too confused and excited to have the energy to be afraid. Fear could wait till sometime when Tuul wasn't running him backwards and forwards in a cargo bay lugging a heavy bag of sand, poring it into incomprehensible runic symbols based upon the Inquisitor's designs. Runes of protection, sigils of binding, circles of banishment, it was all gibberish to Abbas.

Gibberish that he was expected to be able to produce perfectly or several thousand people would die, including himself. So no, he hadn't had time to be afraid.

"Little boy should be afraid. There exists much to fear," Cawed Vira'capac from where he perched on the roof of the Imperial transport, a heavy rifle cradled in his arms like a newborn babe. How the creature had managed to overhear them over the noise of the transport's charging dorsal guns was beyond Abbas.

"Don't listen to it," Tuul glared at Vira'capac in disgust, "And don't reply. The disgusting creature doesn't deserve the satisfaction."

"Disgusting Vira'capac?" howled the Kroot in tittering laughter, "How much of the priest still priest? An arm? A leg? A heart? Priest throws stones and hates human body more than any other man thing."

"Tuul," Mr. Garibaldi ran into the hangar, passing the combat servitors at a brisk trot and seeming not to spare them a second thought, "I just heard from the forward sentries, Hilder's here. Him and the Captain."

"Come on then Lad," Chuckled Tuul in his droning monotone, "You and the other apprentices are to follow Mr. Garibaldi to a secure area. I'll not have a child here for this."

"If you say so sir," Abbas winced as Tull rubbed his hair paternally again. He would have to remember his own strength once he was worthy of augmentics.

"Well my boy," Tuul's monotone chuckle echoed from his vox unit, "It's time to see if this bloody well works. Omnissiah save us all if it doesn't."

"Omnissiah save us all," Abbas agreed, though his prayers had less to do with demonic incursion and more to do with daydreams of porcelain skin and high cheek bones curled up into a smile.

* * *

Daul moved as fast as his legs would take him, dragging Amis by the scruff of the man's shirt as the vagrant hissed and sputtered 'no escape' in constant rhythmic repetition. The Captain grudgingly aided him in hefting the lurker out of the transport lift Cairn had managed to hook up to a mobile power supply commandeered from a cargo hauler.

"Explain this to me again," Miss Winters panted from where she sat in Cairn's cradling arms. The woman had been annoyingly thick when it came to Daul's summaries of demonic lore and would not stop asking the most impossibly obvious questions about it, "Where is this thing from again? And why does it want me?"

"Is this not a discussion better served for some time when we are not engaged in active retreat from a hostile threat?" Daul panted for breath beneath his helmet. The rebreather was slightly on the fritz from where it had taken a backhand from the demon's pincer. The inside of his golden skull helm grew oppressively hot struggling to properly recycle oxygen.

"Inquisitor I'm pretty damn sure I'm about as fragging high on whatever need to know standard your fragging government operates on the general operating of combatting whatever the hell that thing is. Now tell me what you know before I kick your butt from here to sunday," The Captain managed to say that with such absolute confidence that it took a second for Daul to remind himself that he had the advantage in a fight. Still even a toothless grill cat could kill if it got in a proper claw swipe when you were tired from fighting a truss boar.

Cairn warbled in frustration. His face plainly expressing that there was no time for arguments. One did not hide secrets without reason, especially at the cost of innocent lives. Knowledge had no purpose if it couldn't be used.

"Fine, there is a world that lies just beyond the skin of your own. Another universe that operates upon laws of physics and reality not constrained by the natural laws we must obey," Daul smiled as he felt the sensation of cotton blocking his connection to the warp lessening, he was not at full strength but by the Emperor the gloriously unnatural cool of the warp was playing in his head.

"You mean hyperspace," the heretic witch looked over his shoulder at the huffing and puffing form of Father Al'Ashir. The aging clergyman was surprisingly spritely for his advanced years, keeping up the career soldiers in spite of himself.

"No," Daul didn't bother to stop when a gobsmacked looking security officer tried to salute the five of them as they rushed past his position, only idly noting that the officer had reported their position to his superior officer. The demon had to be only minutes behind them, "I do not. As near as I have been able to discover the space you call hyperspace is the space that lies between the realms. Your ships skim the warp without ever entering it."

"It is the space that is not space. It is not a place but an idea, a collection of nightmares given flesh," Al'Ashir rasped breathlessly, "It is the darkness between shadows, a space where time and truth exist only in short bursts. It is the home of evil."

"And you travel through the warp then," the Captain nodded sagely and waved the next security barricade out of their way. The Captain's eyes virtually glowing with comprehension, "That would explain the odd background radiation we detected when the _Endless Bounty_ first showed up in B5 space."

The security officers leapt into action, pulling away the crates and barrels they'd erected as makeshift barricades. The'd done a decent job of creating a choke point, the narrow passageway funneled them into a convenient kill zone. That is to say it would for a mortal opponent. Daul doubted it would provide more than a few minutes delay to the beast they fled but every second counted. They had few enough advantages as it was.

"Doubtlessly," Daul smiled behind his helmet at Cairn's contemptous glares at a young security officer who'd been part of the group responsible for arresting him. The Skitarii still furious at Daul for ordering him to carry Talia in his arms rather than forcing her to walk on fractured ankle. Daul somewhat pitied the next person foolish enough to attempt assassinating him. Cairn had more than his fair share of pent up wounded pride over the whole incident, "The creature that follows us is one of the four... let's call them nations, that make up the realms of chaos. The creatures who live within the warp are creatures of instinct and malevolence."

"Can we negotiate with it?" The Alliance captain with such naïve sincerity that Daul couldn't help but snigger. The very idea of it was preposterous to the point of absolute absurdity. One did not negotiate with a demon, not for anything ever. Cairn stumbled as he struggled to keep his shoulders still, expressing mirth would only cause Miss Winters greater discomfort.

"I should kill him for even suggesting that," Daul hissed irately in High Gothic. His hand clutched the fabric of Amis' jacket so hard it tore the fabric, "Ignorance can only extend so far."

"There is no limit to ignorance" Al'Ashir cooed placatingly, "Let your patience be the greater thing." The man was insufferably reasonable. What Daul wouldn't have given for a raving member of the Ecclesiastic courts demanding blood murder at every turn. He knew how to deal with those.

"If you have a ready supply of virgin sacrifices or supplicant thralls I'm sure you could talk it into a parley. Perhaps you'd even negotiate for a speedy death with only part of the hereafter spent in abject agony as it devoured your soul," Daul chuckled remorselessly, enjoying the disgusted look on the Captain's face more than was proper. These Alliance humans try knew nothing about how the universe worked. It was about time they understood just how little they really knew. , "As it is a demon of Tzeench I'm sure you'd even be able to negotiate for it to take your children rather than your women of breeding age. Provided that is that you pledge your souls to worshiping it."

Sheridan's lip curled in disgust, transforming the man's dimpled face in begrudging credulity. The endless skepticism of the Alliance was trying Daul's patience. They had a demon raising the undead on their station. How much more proof could this man possibly need before he would accept the truth, "Primarch's blood Sheridan. The creature has already broken the laws of man and nature before your eyes. Believe them if you will not believe me."

"I don't know what to believe right now," the Captain narrowed his eyes in frustration, pressing the manual control for the bulkhead doors. The door warbled a furious negative with each push, tacitly unhelpful, eliciting a groan from the bedraggled Captain, "Just perfect."

"It's coming," hiccupped Amis unhelpfully, chittering with a madman's joy as he was overtaken with entropic glee, "It's coming."

The distant sounds of screams and laser-fire grew noticeably closer with every second. "Sheridan I suspect we do not have time for an alternate route."

"I really was hoping to never do this," Captain Sheridan pulled his ID chip off his hand and pressed it against the wall. The sheer metal side pushed forward, opening into the cloying blackness tinged with brief pools of dull red light of a maintenance tunnel. Cairn whistled appreciatively eying the cables lining the wall, he had an odd sense of beauty.

"Don't touch the walls. They're not insulated." Muttered almost went without saying. The walls hummed and growled with the sound of active power lines. Touching them wouldn't just kill a man, they would near vaporize him.

Daul heaved Amis into the corridor and chuckled dryly, "Captain if that thing catches you it will be a blessing to be so close to a quick death."

"I believe you Inquisitor," Talia said in a near whisper from where she sat cradled in the Skitarii's arms helpless and infantile as world of logic and reason shattered into a thousand pieces. "It scares me to death but I believe you."

"Your belief is irrelevant Miss Winters." The woman couldn't have had this epiphany before damning the entire station? Throne but he hated useless people, "Your cowardice serves no one." The Captain either didn't hear him or didn't bother to correct him as they walked into the darkness beyond.

The innards of the Babylon Station were as inscrutable to Daul as the innards of any Imperial ship he'd ever been inside. Though the Inquisition had access to greater levels of confidential technical data than most organizations in the Empire the vast majority of technical data was still the proprietary realm of the Ad-mech. So while Cairn whistled and warbled interestedly at every system they passed, Daul could only guess as to their purpose.

Pregnant moments passed, with only the sounds of nervous breathing and labored footsteps to keep them company. Something about the dull blood red darkness silenced even Miss Winter's questions, one did not wish to tempt fate in such a foreboding space.

The creature was close, far too close for comfort. The mawkish scent of rotting vegetables filled his nose even through his helmet as the distant sounds of gunfire became silence. The guards had managed two minutes more than Daul predicted, they were to be commended at their funerals. A sizzling buzz spat across the righthand wall as a power line shorted out, heralding a furious bellow of pain.

The demon was coming.

"Faster would be better," Al'Ashir said it in the same tone he might have used to admonish an altar boy for carrying the decanter of incense improperly. If the clergyman had held the long wooden switch used for disobedient novices he very well might have been swatting at Cairn's ankles for dawdling.

"Down this way," the Captain turned left and lifted a hatch on the floor, lowering himself feet first on top of a table sitting in the middle of the room below. A small room Daul vaguely recognized as being part of customs, sterile and white.

A conduit burst in the corridor as the internal safety systems struggled to compensate for the added stresses. Warning klaxons wailed furiously as a conduit ruptured, venting an ominously shimmering green liquid onto the ground. It hissed and sparked, devouring plastic casing and pitting the metal with a caustic sizzle.

"Cairn, you first," The bodyguard protested furiously in warbling binary. It was against protocol to allow Daul to stay in a hostile environment but they were well past protocol at this point, "No Cairn, we haven't the time for this. You're stronger than I am, if you're down there you'll be able to help Al'Ashir get down without breaking his neck."

Cairn twittered frustratedly but acquiesced, lowering himself gingerly with his damaged tentacles. Miss Winters just barely fit through the opening with him, her silvery locks of hair snagged on the latch, eliciting hushed oaths and grunts of pain from the woman. Cairn ignored her discomfort with casual indifference.

"You're next Father," Daul pushed the priest forward, grabbing the man beneath his armpits and easing him down to the cyborg's waiting tentacles. Al'Ashir was astonishingly light, the majority of the man's bulk seemed to be his robes rather than his person. The tome the man carried about his waist easily comprised the quarter part of his weight.

The wispy clergyman grunted in displeasure as he was deposited upon the floor, clearly simultaneously glad to have the ground beneath him and annoyed that he would have been unable to achieve it under his own power. Al'Ashir wasn't prone to admitting his own physical failings in his old age. The wiry old goat often bragged he was three times as able as any two men half his age, not an idle boast either. Al'Ashir would recover. Bruised egos hurt less than boiling acid.

The now flaming chemicals leaking from the conduit billowed an acrid black smoke strong enough to make Daul cough, even through the air filtration system in his helmet. Amis threw himself through the opening, coughing and screaming about the beast's coming. Unpleasant for him, but likely a minor impediment for the demon. Well, that was soon remedied.

Powerful enough tear through even the armor of a Land Raider assault tank but light enough for even an imperial guardsman to carry without fatigue Melta-bombs were controlled fission devices favored by the Adeptus Astartes, the preternaturally enhanced genetic super-soldiers of the Empire, in boarding actions. The palm sized disk Daul tossed towards the already burning chemical fire and exposed wiring wasn't nearly as powerful as those used by the Space Marines, but it was more than adequate.

Daul squeezed through the opening, pulling the latch shut after him. A thunderous bang and the screeching of hazard klaxons was music to his ears. Even a demon would think twice before entering that morass of chemicals and fire, "Come then Captain. We have to see a man about a box."

* * *

Li Xiangjian wasn't half the fool Sáclair had hoped him to be. The man hadn't hailed him about the now open gun ports on the _Endless Bounty, _he hadn't moved into a defensive position between the _Endless Bounty_ and the station. The man hadn't made any aggressive moves at all.

The consequence of that was, unfortunately, that there was no way for the _Endless Bounty_ to move into optimal firing range without exposing it's flanks and rear to the _Beijing__ Beauty _or one of her sister ships. Worse there was no way to deploy fighter wings to protect the rear without giving away their intentions to destroy the station.

In her prime, with all her defensive countermeasures active the _Endless Bounty_ was more than a match for this crippled bunch of garbage scows. However as she was now without her void shields defensive batteries, interceptors or bombers deployed she was like a lazy bull lumbering into a pack of hungry wolves. She would gore them with her horns, perhaps, but not before taking a wolf's jaws to the throat.

"What is the progress of loading the Inquisitor's failsafe?" Sáclair sighed as the chronometer hovering in the projector of the great hall flickered and ebbed, ten foot high numbers heralding his son's coming death.

"We are fully loaded and prepared," Mr. Andrews stood at the foot of Sáclair's throne, the bright white silk of his dress uniform offset glaringly by the thick leather oilstained smock laden with tools. The ship's master gunner was unaccustomed to summons and less familiar with proper conversational tact, "You give the word and we'll frag a throne bleeding moon."

The man's brusque belligerence was oddly comforting, especially in the light of Sácomer's recent indisposition. The blubberous sentimental fool had broken down into uncontrollable sobs when he'd received Sáclair's orders that he would have to shoot the station while the Imperials were inside. Utterly unconsolable they'd had to send the man back to his quarters and have Donat take over Sácomer's duties.

Mr. Enzo while a vastly capable second in command, was only a marginal replacement for Étienne Sácomer. He was making a right mess of managing all the command subroutines of the ship. The two logistical servitors on either side of him struggled to keep up with him as they corrected the incorrect inputs and outputs his second in command entered and recorded.

"Throne above don't let my subordinates blow up this ship before we even fire a shot," Sáclair muttered as the unnervingly chipper chief gunner droned on about absurdly specific details about the ship's gun batteries. He couldn't fathom why the number of rats that chose to nest under each cannon was an indication of the safety of their ammunition storage, but Mr. Andrews believed it to be of great relevance.

"Enough! I believe you Mr. Andrews," Sáclair raised his hands in surrender, the jeweled rings on his fingers colliding painfully as he clapped his hands together to get the other man's attention. Once Mr. Andrews started taking about his chosen profession he had to be stopped, else he would never stop of his own accord, "You may resume command of your gun batteries. Best prepare them for immediate action, but remember not to activate them."

"Right sir," Mr. Andrews said as though Sáclair had just proposed that climb a mountian without ever going uphill. The gunner stepped nervously onto a hovering platform and clenched his fists in fear. The man did not like heights, "I'll get right on that sir."

"Yes, you will," Sáclair growled. The hackles on his neck prickled as the he got the vague sensation someone was blowing on the back of his neck. It was one of the more subtle sensations he felt when he linked with the ship, but it was unquestionably the most important. A number of the less sophisticated machine assisted targeting systems used a form of electronic target painting that basic sensors could pick up, even if they weren't able to trace its point of origin.

There were few feelings one remembered quite so vividly as having your ship placed into another ship's targeting systems. It took a conscious effort to quell the primal reaction thundering in his own mind crying for him to "attack, kill, survive" and to move forward and into the wild and untamed reaches of space. The machine spirit of the _Endless Bounty_ was even more restless than he after having been confined to one place for so long a time. They were neither of them made for such a sedentary existence.

The parched and oily voice of Navigators Illrich and Calven broke him from his introspection. They towered over him, looming scarecrows of fine silks and pale flesh. Even by the standards of the void born the navigators were unnatural, a bizarreness that only grew with age as the Navigator gene altered their flesh to better facilitate the navigation of the warp.

The milky white third eye in the center of navigator Illrich's forehead blinked independent from the other two focused on Sáclair's face, "Your grace. We have to remind you of our concerns for taking the current course of action, at least without first warning the Alliance of _why_ we are doing what we must."

"Navigator Illrich," Sáclair massaged the bridge of his nose, easing the tension from his face. Really there was only so many times he could have the exact same conversation and be polite, "I am not going to let a demon have a station full of hundreds of thousands of humans. It is a mercy I grant them."

"Without question your grace," the politeness and submission was awkward coming from Navigator Calven's lips from lack of practice. The Navigator's face blanched at each burst of humility, turning his already pale skin to a lighter shade of bloodless porcelain, "But we have nowhere to go. All our maps are to territories that the Alliance is allied with. Even if we manage to make it back to the Empire in one piece, without the Inquisitor to grant us patents of external acquisition we will be branded as Xenos sympathizers. Worse perhaps, the Inquisition might find the circumstances of his demise questionable enough to declare us excommunicate traitors. Daul Hilder's allies were never the forgiving sort if rumor is to be trusted."

"We cannot allow the Inquisitor do die your grace," Illrich pleaded, his great bat like features flopped into an inexplicable parody of a frown, "It would mean the end of us all."

"We can, and we will if he hasn't killed the beast before the chronometer hits zero. I am bound to do it and do it I shall." Sáclair clapped his hands angrily bellowing for wine. None came.

His wife seemed to have ordered the servants away. She would not soon forgive him for what he was about to do. He might well never see her in his bedchambers willingly. For all that the Lady understood his sense of honor, even agreed with it, her own love of Sáclair's children was greater. Even for the bastards, though it was beyond Sáclair to fathom why.

Women were sometimes funny that way. No use in trying to figure them out, it would only complicate his already troubled mind. Best to focus on the station, and the ships hovering around him like a pack of hungry wolves. If the wolves wished to fight the bear would indulge them when the time came.

Throne how the time drew closer with every second.

* * *

John couldn't tell what was perplexing Mr. Garibaldi more, how John had gotten into the customs office or why he'd ordered his chief of security to obey the orders of Inquisitor Hilder. The stern faced protector of the Babylon station muttered angrily in English and Italian, suggesting increasingly anatomically improbable acts for what the Inquisitor was welcome do do with his orders.

For all Garibaldi bemoaned his circumstances he seemed unlikely to do more than protest. The situation was too desperate for that. They truly were in hot water. John didn't even want to begin to imagine the casualty statistics. Dozens, hundreds, possibly even thousands of people were dead or worse.

The Inquisitor stood at the center of the docking bay, examining great concentric circles of salt. He fussed with the runes and patterns, muttering in his native tongue and waving his hand over the circles, dull blue light dancing between his fingers. The sleepers still in his blood were obviously taxing him greatly but the man outright refused to admit even the slightest feelings of weakness.

"Odd," clucked Magos Tull, his dull monotonous drone as unexpressive as ever, "It would seem that the Inquisitor intentionally provided me with an incomplete map of his protective circles."

John didn't reply to the cyborg. The comment hadn't been directed at him, or anyone for that matter. Tuul had an annoying habit of talking to himself without thinking. Matters not related directly to his own academic inquiry were of secondary concern to the Magos, even in life threatening situations.

Life threatening situations... Dear god was this really happening on his station? Under his command? It beggared belief.

John hadn't ever really believed in demons, not since he was old enough to know that there weren't really monsters living under the bed. The sort of idle childhood fears that could be chased away with a stuffed bear and a hug from a loved one. His father had been very calm and assertive in reminding John that nothing could get to him, that the only monsters were in stories.

It was a shame his father had been so horribly wrong. John didn't like being beholden to the plans of the Inquisitor any more than Michael did. Hilder was confident that he would be able to defeat the beast and nothing John had seen so far indicated otherwise. The Imperials were treating the incursion of hell beasts with the sort of blasé acceptance he might have associated with a pirate raid.

Then again so did Delenn. The Minbari Ambassador seemed no more shaken by the presence of the demon than she might have been for Ambassador G'Kar or Mollari. She could see it, touch it, and smell it so there wasn't any point in denying its existence. For her the only question was how could she help prepare to fight it.

Delenn was possessed of a singularly impressive force of will. When this was all over, if this was all over, if they all survived he would have to make a point of getting to know her better. She was intriguing.

"If"... lord but that time seemed so far away. Oh to hell with just sitting around. It was about damn time to be proactive. Frag it all, he was an Earth Force Captain. It was time to damn well act like it, "Inquisitor how close are you to being ready? The creature cannot possibly be just biding its time"

"I'm going as fast as I may Captain. If you'll recall your subordinates are the ones who robbed me of my full ability," The Inquisitor's voice was as cool as steel and twice as sharp. His hands did falter as he shot Miss Winters a withering glare, "And as I have been robbed of both time and strength I will do as I may."

An ugly man with a squashed face and cross eyes hobbled forwards, his hunchback twisting in wobbling tessellation with each half step. His face was near cherubic with joy as he started speaking an a pained half slur, "I believe we can be of service to that end your grace. We can add our own talents to your own."

The ragged group of lurkers who'd been huddling together behind the packing crates nervously followed the hunchback, their faces a nervous mix of apprehension and anticipation. Talia Winters gasped from where she sat at the edge of the circle nursing her wounded ankle, "They're telepaths. They're _all_ telepaths."

"Blood of Horus a psychic choir!" Inquisitor Hilder's voice cracked in surprise. Had John been able to see the Inquisitor's face he suspected that the man's jaw would have been hanging open. It had to be galling for a person who prided themselves on being the superior psychic to discover that a small community of psychics had been living under their very nose, "By the Throne! Captain Sheridan I was assured in no uncertain terms that the only psychic on this ship was your tame psychic Miss Winters."

"The only _legal _one," Corrected Miss Winters. The "tame psychic" comment raised the woman's hackles enough that she'd stood up in spite of her wounded ankle, "Unsanctioned psychics aren't allowed."

"The Psi Corps is evil! If the choices are entry into it or death I chose death. Miss Winters you know that the Psi Corps cannot be trusted, you have to know," snarled the hunchback, "After all you've seen how can you trust them?"

"The Psi Corps has been good to us, they teach us and train us," The conviction in Talia's words was as suspect as the strength of her wobbling ankle, "They do what must be done."

"Like trying to arrest me?" Inquisitor Hilder growled dangerously, "That does seem to be a theme you Psi Corps are fond of bringing up."

"We wish to join the Empire, please grant us sanctuary. Give us our freedom from the Psi Corps and we will give you anything you want," the hunchback dropped to his knees and clapped his hands together in desperate prayer. The gaggle of unsanctioned psychics dropped down and prostrated themselves before the Inquisitor, pleading to his humanity and benevolence.

The Inquisitor stood stock still, staring at them. He looked to John, the golden skull face of his mask strangely pensive in the dull light of the docking bay. John thought about all the trouble the Psi Corps had caused him personally, all the lives that Mr. Bester had ended in his foolish crusade of dominance.

Tecnically John should be arresting the psychics on the spot, before they could be granted sancuary but what could granting some people their freedom lose him? John nodded to the Inquisitor in silent permission. The Inquisitor quirked his head like a Jack Russel Terrier hearing a high pitched noise, perplexity visible even through his helmet.

His confusion made sense. By all indications they'd seen so far psychics held places of status in Imperial society. It had to be baffling for him why a psychic would need to flee his nation of birth. With psychics responsible for the primary methods of communication and navigation it stood to reason that they would live charmed lives in Imperial society.

"You wish... to join the Empire...as psychic servants of the Inquisition?" The words came out of his mouth disjointed, his native phonetics coloring the conversation, "It is... in my power to grant this..."

"Please we beg of you," the hunchback bowed deeply, his head touching the ground, "Let us prove our worth and take us to where we will be of use." The Kroot hooted in laughter, slapping his knees in amusement. It really was an odd creature.

"Emperor guides in darkest hour. Take what he give," The wispy priest said in somber pronouncement. The hard lines of his wizened face furrowed with something unspoken, a look of pity uncharacteristic of the Imperial habit in his eyes for the fugitive psychics.

It was times like this that the lack of cultural knowledge of the Empire frustrated John. A thousand unspoken assumptions were being communicated by the Imperials and he couldn't even begin to guess as to their meanings. They were as alien as any of the League of Non-Aligned worlds he swore.

"Very well," Daul pulled his sword from its scabbard and stabbed it into the deck in front of the hunchback, "I accept you as vassals and bondsmen of my household. Normally oaths of loyalty are required but under the circumstances a simple yes or no will suffice. Do you swear to follow me to death and beyond in service of the Golden Throne?"

The Inquisitor did not wait for the deafening chorus of affirmations before waving his hand and pulling a ruby the size of John's balled fist from a black chest offered by Tuul with an slight exercise of telekinesis. The shimmering red stone hovered above his hand, coruscating and shimmering with unnatrual powers. Delenn's disgusted intake of breath at the sight of it mirrored the foul oath she uttered in her native Minbari, a word he'd never believed could touch her lips.

"In Valen's name, a soul stone." Delenn's hand's trembled as she unconsciously reached for John's sleeve, clutching it for stability. The stone had broken what little remained of Delenn's composure, revealing real fear, "It must not be."

"What is a soul stone?" John watched as the Inquisitor ordered the psychics to take positions around the circle while Hilder stood in the middle with the stone, hovering the stone above his head. He chanted in guttural tones, a language that Daul hadn't heard before, and hoped to never hear again. It sounded like a mix of grinding iron and dogs howling.

"The Vorlon's are only one of the first ones," Delenn looked away from the stone in disgust, clearly working to control her stomach, "That... thing is a _toy_ used by one of the worst of them. Arrogant and immortal they delight in toying with the younger races in life and in death. A prison for the soul so they might delight in playing with it or destroying it on a whim."

"Other first ones?" Great, just what he needed, more races that the Earth Alliance knew nothing about with powerful technologies and questionable motives. More than questionable if Delenn's information was to be trusted, "Do they... have they come back to this sector?"

"Oh no," Delenn shook her head disgustedly, "We aren't evolved enough for them to bother with, not a threat to them. But that means little to a race so capricious and cruel."

"Greater wisdom never spoken," crooned Vira'Capac, "Trust not the never dying. Foolish creatures they are. Greater fools they will be."

"If you all are done discussing matters of which you know little and understand less," The Inquisitor shouted, his furious decry repeating from the voices of all his impromptu psychic choir in debased echoes, "It is done."

The stone hovered in the center of the concentric circles leading from the door, taking care not to step through the salt. The runes across the floor radiated a powerful red burst of energy then dissolved into a near invisible shimmer across the floor. Garibaldi reached out to touch it only to have his hand slapped back by Daul furiously with the scabbard of his sword, "Have you lost your mind? It's a soul trap. It will trap _any_ soul to pass into it."

"So what," Garibaldi nursed his hand gingerly, "We wait for it to come to us and just step in? Just like that?"

"Exactly like that Mr. Garibaldi. We have what it wants in this room. Enough psychics to give it the power to pull this station back into the realm of chaos," The Inquisitor laughed, sure of himself, "It will come. It has no choice. It will seek out the greatest source of psychic energies, which is of course my trap in the door."

A howling scream echoed through the station, seeping into John's very marrow. Amis laughed, "It comes, thirsting for blood! Can't you hear it? Can't you see it? I can hear the songs of suffering in my teeth. The prince of the impossible path comes! Shel'za'bek'na'kezzak comes!"

"What?" Daul screamed, reaching down and grabbing the man by his collar, shaking him soundly, "You knew the creature's true name? By the Throne why did you not tell me that ages ago? Fool of a man! Hundreds die for your insolence."

"It come to us... it comes to us," Amis quirked his head, eyes widening beyond their natural size, "But why would it come through small door when there is an entrance worthy of it's presence?"

"Small door? What other door..." John turned around to the airlock as though seeing it for the first time, "Inquisitor, you said these things don't have to obey natural laws. Is breathing one of those laws they don't have to follow?"

"Throne, no." Daul turned to the gaping mouth of the docking bay in horror as his cyborg bodyguard dragged him back to safety. Thross warbled furiously trying to keep the furious Inquisitor back from danger, "By His will... _no_..."

The doors to the docking bay shook and groaned as the gears struggled against the beast's demonically enhanced strength. The creature, twice the size it had been in the market palace howled in victory as it shoved its bulbous bulk through the opening and into the docking bay. It's hands smoked slightly at the touch of iron on it's flesh but only slightly, stronger for having consumed its minions.

"_No_..._no_..._**no**_... screamed Daul, "This wasn't supposed to happen blood of the Emperor this wasn't supposed to happen," He turned to Tuul, "Fire, fire, fire _everything_."

The bulky servitor constructs advances on the demon, their massive weapons firing explosives. The shells burst upon the creature's flesh, showering the deck with offal and acidic blood that smoked poisonous vapors. The Alliance security officers fired their side arms into the open wounds, PPG fire blistering the wounded flesh and lighting small fires in the open wounds.

Tuul directed the servitors, standing in the back and firing great gouts of plasma fire from his heavy cybernetic harness. The psychic choir did their best to harry the beast with their own skills. though if the pained looks on their faces were anything to judge by they did so with little to no success.

The creature simply stood there laughing from its many tiny mouths, "Playthings, puppets of the false corpse to be. Morsels unworthy of my pallet, oh how you bicker and whine."

It batted a claw and bisected one of the servitor constructs, severing its legs from its torso at the knee. The servitor continued firing, oblivious to its injury even as its vital fluids seeped into the deck, pooling with the smoldering puddles of flaming poisons. Two security officers rushed in, grabbing the servitor by the armpits and dragging it away, trying to get it to safety.

The demon howled with amusement and opened its great oblong maw in anuran parody, firing a long barbed tongue out and dragging one of the officers into its mouth whole. It swallowed excruciatingly slowly, luxuriating in the amusing wriggles of the dying man. It chortle amusedly to itself and sung a perverse parody of song, like nails on a chalkboard, as it played with the mortals like a cat toying with its prey.

Even the explosive shells of the servitors did little more than annoy the beast as it went about its fun. Miss Winters screamed at the top of her lungs, waving her arms and trying to draw the beast into the Inquisitor's trap. Her effort failed magnificently when a servitor weapon misfired, blowing up inside the magazine and tossing her backwards and into the circle.

The runes flared and Talia screamed as though the flesh were being ripped from her bones. The red stone swirled with color and turned to black, dropping to the ground next to Miss Winter's unmoving form. Garibaldi tried to rush out of cover to her but was stopped by Delenn's firm grip, "She is gone Mr. Garibaldi. There is no undoing what has been done to her. Focus on your own life."

"Frag this," John turned to Garibaldi, "This thing needs to go down. Do we have any solutions left? Anything at all?"

"Captain the Inquisitor's plan _was _our hail mary play. I've got nothing," Garibaldi gnashed his teeth, "We're going to have to order the Beijing beauty to fire on the station. I dare that bastard to stand up to a laser barrage."

"Are you insane Garibaldi," John shook his head, "We would kill hundreds, maybe even thousands of people on the station."

"Do you have a better idea sir? I'm willing to hear it."

"No... it is... I cannot... but I must. For the Emperor I must," the Inquisitor looked into his hands muttering in utter contempt. John recognized the tone of voice. Hilder was convincing himself of the necessity of something, something he considered more repugnant than anything he'd done before, "Emperor forgive me but it must be done. By my soul it must be done."

"Inquisitor?" Tuul hissed in nervous monotone reverting to his own language. John understood enough to catch the words "regret" and "foolishness." Hilder wasn't to be dissuaded however. The man stood and walked across the docking bay, away from the fighting and to a huddled man sobbing behind a crate.

The Inquisitor reached down and pulled the man to his feet. Amis stared into the Inquisitor's face, his eyes full of tears as the taller man pulled the skull off of his head to let Ami's look into his face. Inquisitor Hilder's voice saddened as he put his hand comfortingly onto Ami's shoulder, "Tell me Amis are you free of sin."

"Just do it," Amis spat into the Inquisitor's face, "We've both known this is coming since the second you freed me from my cell."

"Yes," The Inquisitor sighed sadly, "Perhaps I did."

The two stared into each other's eyes for a moment more before Daul drove his sword into Amis' heart without warning. John screamed in protest but didn't dare approaching the two men. Coruscating black lightning burst from Amis's gaping wound, winding around the Inquisitor and binding the demon at the wrists and neck, dragging it towards Amis.

The demon howled and screamed, clawing at the deck. It tore deep furrows into the plating as it inevitably was pulled towards Amis. The Inquisitor stared at the beast coldly, impassively, repeating the beast's true name again and again. The creature howled piteously as cowardice overtook it, its flesh disappearing into insubstantial vapors consumed by the lightning.

The Inquisitor pulled his blade from Amis and the lightning and vapors pulled back around Ami's body, forming into thick chains of purest obsidian worked with gold. The Inquisitor sliced his own finger with the blade and drew on the convulsing man's chest, drawing runes into Amis' flesh with his life's blood. The runes bubbled and melted inwards, glowing with molten heat and scarring into permanent markers of the Inquisitor's handiwork.

" Shel'za'bek'na'kezzak I name thee _Losiencheoir_ once and bind the," The Inquisitor flicked his blood across the smoldering corpse wrapped in chains, "Shel'za'bek'na'kezzak I name thee _Losiencheoir_ twice and command thee. Shel'za'bek'na'kezzak I name thee _Losiencheoir_ thrice and make thee mine."

"No!" Amis howled in a voice not his own. The chained body lifted from the ground hovering in front of the Inquisitor, struggling with its bindings and howling in defiance, "Why have you done this? How have you done this? Release me. _Release me _or I shall reign fire and suffering down on you and your kin for ten generations to come."

"Silence beast," The Inquisitor slapped Amis, or rather what had used to be Amis, across the face with the broad side of his hand, "You speak only when spoken to." The creature growled angrily, working its jaws in furious effort, but to no effect. No noise left its lips.

"What have you done Inquisitor?" Delenn stared at him in terror, "What have you done."

"What I always do," The Inquisitor's eyes flickered with renewed sparks of balefire, the hard edge John knew to be the true Daul Hilder returning to the man's eyes, "What I must. I do what I must."

"You killed him," Garibaldi stared into the hateful eyes of what had once been Amis. It was not a question, "You sacrificed him to bind that creature to his body."

"Yes," Inquisitor Hilder stared at the bound demon regretfully, "Were I stronger I might have taken the beast... but in my current state I needed a subtler method. I did not condemin him to this lightly."

"Then you condemn yourself as well," Growled an angry metallic voice from the entrance. The towering from of Kosh the Vorlon Ambassador glided in past the prostrate form of Talia. The Vorlon's red eye stared from the blackened soul stone to the hovering demon bound in mortal flesh, "Those who consort with the creatures of the third space cannot be permitted to exist."

"And do you intend to kill me Ambassador?" Inquisitor Daul grabbed the pommel of his sword firmly. Cairn, snapped his remaining pincers ominously and fingered the trigger of his pistols eagerly.

"Yes." The room went cold as the Vorlon drew in power, a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors flashing down his chest. The room shuddered and shook, the already stunned defenders struggling to their feet, looking to John for orders. Orders that he had no idea how to give.

Did he defend Daul or support the Vorlon?

The chronometer on Tuul's waist chittered in furious alarm. The Imperials all stopped preparing to fight looking at each other in mild surprise. Tuul laughed in his dull drone, "It would seem that you will get your wish Ambassador. But not, I suspect, the way you planned for it to happen."

"No," Kosh hissed in fury apparently getting, "You wouldn't."

Inquisitor Hilder smiled at Kosh his face more at peace than John had ever seen it, "Wouldn't I?"

* * *

Sáclair stared at the slowly blinking chronometer, blinking the tears out of his eyes. Emperor forgive him, "Fire forward batteries, full salvo."

* * *

A/N: I apologize for the wait. Next chapter soon and it's gonna be a doozy.


	14. Chapter 14

A hundred crewmen and servitors struggled with the elephantine form of a cyclonic torpedo, shoving the titanic atomic projectile into the firing chamber of the forward torpedo tube. The chains lashed to its sides groaned in duress as the cylinder yanked forwards. Heave, grind, heave, and grind, little by little making its way. A larger ship would have used automated systems but the _Endless Bounty_ made due with sweat and recalcitrance.

"Forward you gutless sons of whores," bellowed the foreman. His smoke darkened voice whistled with each breath through a twist of broken nose, only hinting at the man's fondness for using the long black whip lashed to his belt, "Put your backs into it!"

Osma disliked the foreman greatly. Corporal punishment had its uses, even the writings of the Saints and Primarchs spoke of that, but there was a difference between administering just force and simply being a bully. Osma did not like bullies.

It seemed utterly pointless to shout at the gunnery crew. Half of them were deaf to begin with. And the half that wasn't deaf had their ears plugged with wadded cloth or tallow to block the sounds of the heavy machinery.

His lip curled in disgust as the foreman lashed out at a crewman who'd slipped and fallen. The foreman's whip sliced through the air and cracked the man across the back, slashing the back of the man's shirt, "Up you lazy slug! Up and work like a man."

Osma chewed his lip, reminding himself that it was the foreman's right to flog lagging crewmen as he saw fit. It was not his place to question the command of Mr. Andrews without lodging complaints with the chain of command. Complaints that would be ignored, no doubt. Rebuking crewmen was hardly a crime.

Saboteurs were his only concern at the moment. Best to keep his focus Osma reminded himself, "The Amon Sui won't lose theirs over a flogging."

"Sir?" Officer Friedrich asked nervously, rubbing the stubble on his chin in frustration. A Belzafester by birth Friedrich often seemed out of his element on the _Endless Bounty_ and its naval code of justice. He would learn with time.

"Concentration my boy. Don't lose yours," Osma growled over the sound of the team wedging the torpedo into place. The dense airlock door was lowered by a dozen Ogryn manipulating a heavy iron crank. The screeching hiss of pressurized air sucking out of the breach drowned out Freidrich's reply in a wave of noise, drowning out the internal communication systems of the Adeptus Arbities issue armor.

Osma could just barely make out the foreman's lips mouthing the words, "Move you pathetic piles of puss," through the thick vapor of pressurized air and machine lubricants. The translucent brown mist hovered in the weak artificial gravity, leaving ghostlike outlines of smoke where men and servitors wandered through them.

"Blood of Hourus," Swore Friedrich as he tore his helmet from his head to furiously rub at his ears with the palm of his left hand. It would seem that Friedrich hadn't disabled his helmet's autosenses. The already defining sound would have been amplified and focused tenfold, "What was that?"

Osma yanked the dazed Friederich behind the hazard markings on the floor by his combat webbing pulling him to safety as a pillar rocketed down and clamped to the socket Friedrich had been standing on top of only seconds ago. A blue coruscating field of energy danced down the pillar feeding energy into the forward battery.

Osma slapped Fredrich's shoulder's conciliatory, his glove thudding indistinctly on the ceramite plating, "Up boy, we have work to do. If you can't be bothered to remember the safety procedures in my mission briefings you won't survive long on this ship. The _Endless Bounty_ is a treacherous mistress, you disrespect her for a second and she'll leave you crippled killed or worse."

Friedrich yelled something rude in the Belzafester language that Osma took as an agreement, stepping quickly to avoid treading on a crewman's foot. Perhaps the "man" part of crewman was overly generous, the child couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve, but a couple of missing fingers and a limp marked him as a veteran of the guns. Orphans were ten coppers for a dozen on the _Endless Bounty_, substantially cheaper than the specialized servo skulls that were otherwise necessary for the delicate and dangerous work of a powder monkey.

The foreman's hand flexed excitedly as though to lash the boy for daring to limp rather than scurry. He thought better of it in short order, the foreman knew Osma's respect for the foreman's position would count for nothing the second he loosed his lash on a child. Explaining the summary execution of a foreman to Mr. Andrews would be difficult but not impossible.

Apparently shocked by the foreman's lapse the boy looked at Osma. Eyes too old for their face met Osma's, marked with the determined hardness. Osma smiled at the boy and received an shy grin, rusty from lack of practice in return. The boy hobbled away soon after, unwilling to press the foreman's patience. Throne but the boy reminded him of Ephraim. His thoughts often drifted back to Ephraim.

Ephraim's laugh, his foolish impulsiveness, his fondness for stories of the great saints Ephraim was the picture of childish innocence. The hollow emptiness in the child's eyes was still there, but less so now that he was in the primary school of Mistress Terwani. Incorrigibly cheerful and infectiously competent the schoolmistress had worked miracles in bringing Ephraim out from his shell. The child still flinched whenever Osma made the mistake of talking in more than a whisper but progress was progress.

He only wished his investigations into the Amon Sui had flowed as smoothly. The child's knowledge of his former mentor's dealings was negligible other than a vague knowledge of his chores. The boy had been too young for any real responsibility, adopted in anticipation of future utility. Though he would never admit it to Nor, he was grateful that the Medicus had forced him to take the boy.

He'd never though of himself as a father, nor had he ever particularly had the urge for a family. His profession was too dangerous for him to bring a wife or child into the mix. Family could be captured, ransomed, used against a lawman. Most ships of the Emperor's most great and glorious navy even forbade their lawmen from having families at all.

Osma lived his life for the Emperor's justice. It had been his brother Namir who'd been on the path to a wife and children. Namir was supposed to carry on the family legacy.

Namir who was dead, along with his young wife.

Namir... Throne but the boy's willful spirit was like Namir's. Namir had driven their father to the point of madness with questions and observations, and it seemed as though Ephraim would do the same given time. The child was hard, too hard for a boy of five, but for a song and a story the child was willing to try and move the stars. He caught himself humming an old Amon Sui lullaby and stifled it with a cough.

Not fast enough though, Friedrich snorted and muttered something about "new fathers being worse than moon eyed lovers." The Belzafester was all too comfortable joking in public about matters best left behind closed doors. It was indecent. The man would be discussing light skirted women before the day's end.

"One more word Officer Friedrich and I will have you scrubbing pots with the new recruits," Osma grunted a slightly petulant growl. His indignation only seemed to amuse Friedrich more, that odd Belzafester humor again. How was one supposed to get any work done when every third word was taken as a joke?

Red klaxon's flashed heralding deafening sirens. The guns were firing soon, woe betide anyone who was in the way of the firing mechanisms. Osma frog marched Friedrich forward unceremoniously into one of the hexagonal safe zones marked off with hazard tape, "Come on then funny man, lets laugh in a place that won't kill you for standing in it."

Friedrich only laughed harder in reply. He really was an astoundingly strange man.

The gun batteries growled in ear-splitting staccato, massive pistons and servos shifting the titanic weapons into place. The dozen servitors dedicated to the targeting computer on each gun groaned in an unsettling chorus of tactical data and technical information, filling what little silence remained. Their glassy eyes looked past the sheer wall of the bulkhead and into space, seeing what could not be seen by the naked eye.

"Come on then you grox lipped pinch pocketed rapscallions, the Emperor can't be here personally but we can bloody well be his flaming fist in the meanwhile," The foreman was working himself into a fervor, smacking his chest with the hilt of his whip in eager rhythm. His lips worked counting down from five again and again in eagerness.

The gunners all waited with baited breath, unmoving anticipation simmering in every man jack's belly. Five four three two one, five four three two one, five four three two one. They all mouthed the words over and over again, hoping, waiting, and praying.

And then it came. The klaxons shifted from red to blue, and the floor sparked with coruscating energy off the main energy feed into the gun batteries. Brilliant arks of tessellating lighting danced along the exposed feeds, screaming and spitting as drips of oil and water fell from pipes overhead.

"Fire forward batteries, full salvo." Bellowed the voice of the captain over the loudspeaker, barely audible in the din of cheering voices and screeching metal. The gunners sung a horribly out of tune chant of victory as the final firing pistons locked into place, charged, and then... nothing.

The chanting turned to stunned disbelief as the coruscating power feeds died along with the lights, plunging the room into utter darkness and disabling the gun batteries entirely. Furious voices howled curses as darkness broke from the light of glow sticks and personal illuminators.

"Bastard Amon Sui!" Osma snarled hefting his shotgun in fury and hurrying in the direction of the closest power station, "Come Friedrich, we have work to do."

* * *

Several pregnant moments passed in silence before it occurred to Daul that the cyclonic payload that ought to have destroyed the station already had yet to arrive. It was an unfortunate peculiarity that had not been lost on Ambassador Kosh as he took it upon himself to remove the Inquisitor form the mortal coil in an astonishing burst of psychic power.

No two psychic attacks were alike; the way in which a psychic connected with the warp to draw upon its energies was deeply rooted within one's state of mind. The raving and ravenous lashing out of a chaos cultist or rabid mutant broiled with anger and filth, the roiling power of the Eldar seethed with an ancient and primal force, the sanctioned psychics of the Imperium teetered with barely controlled agitation, and even a Space Marine librarian rumbled with the force of his own conviction.

The Vorlon was none of these. The attack that ruptured Daul's left arm at the elbow and sent him tumbling backwards gave no warning, just dispassionate surgical precision. His own runic protections and psychic hood crushed under the unexpected assault, cut out from under him before they could protect him.

Searing pain was distant in his mind as he sailed through the air his eyes stared uncomprehendingly at the bloodied stump of what had once been his left arm sprayed a thick red spray of vital liquid across the deck.

He sat for a few seconds, mildly aware of the sounds of gunfire, mildly aware that he ought to be howling in pain before indulging in his agony. Wailing like a baby while grasping at the thin tendrils of visceral trailing back to his arm in a vain effort to re-attach it, Daul wallowed in pain.

The Inquisitor's mind simply refused to admit that his body had been crippled and maimed, though the rapid loss of blood aided that greatly. Bright flashes of laser fire and plasma bursts seared through the air as Daul fumbled through a satchel at his side, fingers blundering about for a syringe of pain inhibitor.

Pudgy hands grabbed him by the neck and dragged him backwards away from the fighting. The chubby cheeked secretary to the Centauri Ambassador puffed and wheezed with exertion as he moved the substantially larger Inquisitor, "Come on, come on, you need to move Inquisitor. You need to move now!"

Daul kicked his legs across the floor, hindering their progress as much as helping in his incoherence. His stump throbbed with pain from the treatment. The fingers of his remaining hand found the syringe in his bag. Without thinking he tried to remove the cap with his missing left hand, twisting his left side agonizingly into the edge of the crate Vir had chosen to shelter behind. Daul swore furiously in High Gothic and dropped the syringe into his lap.

He bit his lip and sobbed slightly staring at the blood seeping past his fingers as he did his best to compress the wound with his right hand. Hopeless Metzik words of prayer slipped from unwilling lips, "Throne help me!"

"Stop squirming and Vira'capac will fix," crooned the annoyed voice of the alien bending over him. Sinewy fingers yanked Daul's hand away, shoving an uncapped needle into the open wound and injecting a local anesthetic. Blissful lightheadedness kissed its way through Daul's butchered body.

The wide Centauri did his best to compress the wound with a silk scarf, vainly trying to stem the flow of blood, "If we don't get this sealed he's going to bleed out."

"Always problems, problems and more problems," The Kroot reached back into his mess of quills and twisted, freeing one of them from his scalp with a squelching pop. The hollow protrusion of bone dripped a viscous yellow liquid that hissed and spat as it hit the deck, a concentrated venom unique to Vira'capac, "Man things haven't learned that must listen to Vira'capac."

Vira'capac shoved Daul to the floor with his foot, then squatted upon Daul's chest, putting A torturous amount of pressure on Daul's shoulder to stem the flow of blood. A taloned hand pressed the dripping venom of the quill against the wound spreading searing mordant pain as the vitriolic liquid forced coagulation. In Vira'capac's prey it the venom caused immediate blood clots and aneurism but it might well save Daul's life.

Vir tied the blood soaked silk in a tight tourniquet around the injury, shimmering gold fabric clashing with thick red-black stains of blood. The little man's fingers shook nervously as he tied a knot of fabric. The Centauri had more of a spine than Daul would have credited him with, most professional soldiers wouldn't have had the stomach to help him.

A long gouge of psychic blue flames tore across the floor, boiling away steel and flesh with impunity. An unfortunate alliance security officer howled with agony as he was rendered down to a small puddle of smoldering viscera and cracked skeleton, his screams drowned the rapid whistling escape of steam flesh.

"Maker's curse," Vir wretched but, to his credit, managed not to lose the contents of his stomach. Though by the look on the Centauri's face, it was a near miss.

Daul allowed Vira'capac to lift him from the floor, wobbling as he reminded himself not to steady himself on the crate with his missing arm. His head swam from pain and blood loss, but there was no time for injury. The Lionhearts and human psychics fought a losing battle against, laser fire and bolter shot colliding harmlessly with a flaming corona of blue lightning protecting the snarling Vorlon.

Next to a cored out remnant of a combat servitor Cairn's broken form lay prostrate before the Vorlon, crushed legs flailing uselessly as the Skitarii lashed out with his mechandrites against the telekinetic shield as Tuul pulled him backwards. The Vorlon ignored Cairn, approaching Daul with relentless patience. Step by step, a cyclopean monster of death.

"We aren't dead." His mind was a disconnected jumble of thoughts and feelings, divorced from the raging battle and glacial advance of the Vorlon, "Eye of Horus the bastard lost his nerve... we aren't dead!"

But why? There must have been a reason... by the Throne Abbas. How could he have been so blind? He should have realized it the second that he saw Tuul. There was no way that Sáclair was going to destroy the station with Abbas on board. Sáclair's love would be his undoing.

One should never underestimate a parent's love. Daul knew that with piercing clarity.

"No... no I will not allow myself to die in this way. I am Daul bloody Hilder not some cowering wretch! You hear me you xenos son of a whore? You can't kill me!" Daul held up his remaining arm and focused his own pain and rage into one burst of psychic force. A resounding burst of purple lightning flew from his fingers, bisecting the protective telekinetic shell of the Vorlon's shield and colliding with the center mass of the encounter suit.

The irregular jeweled chest of the Vorlon flashed and sparked, the scintillating flows of energy coruscating harmlessly across the encounter suit, seemingly invigorating the Vorlon rather than harming it. It screeched something that might have been a laugh, gliding forwards purposefully.

The bolter round that collided with the unshielded encounter suit was not met with equal impunity. The explosion tossed the Vorlon a meter back and tore a sizable hole in the Vorlon's encounter suit, exposing glowing crystalline flesh beneath. Shimmering rivulets of red ichorous blood dripped from the hovering xenos. The creature smote the war servitor, exploding it's head with beam of sorcerous energies.

"Glorious," Chuckled the dull rasping whisper. a voice that Daul had never heard in his life, though his recognition was immediate. Losiencheoir hovered above him, his chains hanging from splayed limbs like some grotesque marionette. The demon leered amusedly at his captor through twisted face of what had once been Amis, eagerly anticipating his rapidly approaching freedom.

A freedom that Daul could ill afford. A tool that he could not afford to ignore, "Losiencheoir... kill."

"Of course my master." The Demonhost trilled, almost lazily, before tossing itself forwards.

* * *

John struggled to move the form of Talia Winters, aided by the surprisingly strong Imperial clergyman Al'Ashir. She groaned and muttered about something being wrong as they dragged her back into the customs lounge and away from the gunfire. It hadn't taken long for John to issue the retreat order. Once the first man turned into a pile of liquid flesh it became readily apparent that a new strategy was necessary. It hadn't taken much to convince station security that discretion was the better part of valor.

He would have order on his station but for now his priority was getting the non-combatant civilians Ambassadors out of harm's way. Let the fools kill each other.

"Is anyone on this station not completely insane today," Garibaldi swore angrily as he fought to drag a furiously kicking Delenn away from the battle. His efforts were rewarded with an odd combination of Minbari martial arts that left him clutching air. The retired Gropo staggered but reached out and grabbed the Ambassador by her hair, yanking hard. The Minbari ambassador, unaccustomed to factoring that into her self defense, yelped in surprise and dropped down on one knee, "Jesus Delenn, get a hold of yourself! We're on your side remember?"

"Mr. Garibaldi if you do not let go of me immediately I will do you great bodily harm," the Minbari ambassador exhaled deeply, struggling to get herself back in control of her emotions, "None of this was supposed to happen. None of it."

Mr. Garibaldi let go of her, his toss slightly more rough than what was strictly necessary, "What good does tossing yourself back into that nightmare do?"

"I have to try and stop them," Delenn stood up and wrung her hands together in a worrying gesture, the soft blue fabric of her robes shed little motes of dust with every shake. She wore an expression on her face that John hadn't ever seen before, a worried innocent hopelessness like a child watching her parents fighting for the first time, "This cannot be allowed to continue."

John rested his hand on her shoulder comfortingly. She stared back at him, her soulful grey eyes pooling with tears. Little rivulets of grief and pain streaked the dust and muck of the day down her cheeks, emphasizing the dimpling of her right cheek in a way that was totally inappropriate to be thinking of at the moment.

"Delenn, this is happening. It is happening to us in the here and now," Delenn turned her head, staring away from the sincerity in his voice, "If you go back into there I can't guarantee your safety and I cannot in good conscience allow you to walk to your death. You will not go back in there. Killing yourself does no good to anyone."

Delenn opened her mouth to protest but shut her teeth with a click and wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her robe, "You do not understand Captain. You cannot hope to understand." She did not, however, try to re-enter the docking bay.

Michael massaged his hands, "I've had it up to here with surprises today Sir."

"We aren't done yet," John wiped the sweat from his brow and flinched as someone screamed in the cargo bay. Earlier this week he'd been thinking that he wanted to know Kosh better as a friend and ally. Today he was wondering if he should be killed. "Do you remember what happened the last time the Vorlons felt the younger races weren't playing by the rules?"

"Death-walker, just perfect." Michael groaned, "This day just keeps getting better."

Delenn's eyes widened and her face paled. The Vorlons had intervened immediately and decisively do remove Deathwalker, assassinating her as she was transported of Babylon 5. The Vorlon solution to any perceived threat to their Empire would be equally swift and permanent.

"Down fast! Danger bad times!" Screamed the Imperial priest in his haphazard patois, dropping flat against the ground as the massive and bulbous severed head of a war servitor bounced into the customs area, knocking a trio of retreating security officers down like bowling pins.

John retched but he had nothing left in his stomach to purge but a coppery taste of sick. He covered his mouth and coughed at the nauseating smell of the thick white ichorous blood of the servitor. The poor thing was long dead; it simply didn't know it yet. The decapitated servitor's wide mouth continued to work noiselessly screeching in agony, cybernetic eyes the size of oranges shifting around in apparent bewilderment.

Garibaldi shot the poor creature between its eyes. It was a small mercy.

"Garibaldi," John wiped his lips with the back of his hand, "I need you to get ready to vent the atmosphere from the docking bay. A full vent, knock all the air and expose the bay to vacuum."

"We might kill everyone in there," it was not a refusal, simply a statement of fact. Garibaldi could, and would, do anything necessary to ensure the safety of Babylon 5, "The humans and some of the Imperials weren't wearing pressure suits. And I doubt that the Vorlon will be much more than annoyed by being tossed into space."

"The ones not in pressure suits will have to get to the Imperial transport. I'm not the one who had them start a war in my docking bay but I'm will be the one to stop it," Noticing Father Al'Ashir was edging towards the door John aimed his side arm at the Imperial priest,, "I wouldn't."

"Andrews," yelled Garibaldi, "We got anyone still in the bay?"

"Gomez and Martinez are on the other side of the bay... it looked like Martinez was hurt bad. I don't think either of them had long to live a minute tops," A haggard man with a slight lisp growled, "Other than that they're all active combatants. I saw the Centauri go down behind a crate after getting strafed by Kosh... I think he's probably dead as well."

"Then seal the inner doors and vent the bay," John fired a warning shot in from of Al'Ashir when the priest twitched, clearly planning to make a break for the door, "Now."

Delenn said nothing, staring at the docking bay with an unreadable expression. She did not protest John's gentle shepherding towards the CnC, continuing her silent contemplation of the room beyond.

* * *

"Power from the main batteries has gone elsewhere milord," Donat snarled in fury disgustedly manipulating the manual controls to the ships forward guns, "Bastard Amon Sui, we can aiding demonic heresy to the list of charges we can execute them for."

"Gone? Gone where exactly?" Sáclair's heart hammered with a mix of fury and exaltation. He might well kiss the Amon Sui before he gave the order to hang them. Abbas was alive, for now. But how had they done it? He hadn't felt even the slightest hiccup from the ships control interface.

Even how he felt totally normal in his melding with the ship. He could feel the guns, he knew that he should be able to use them but they just would not respond no matter what he did. It was like the shadow of a lost limb. His body stretched and reached with long missing fingers of willpower.

"I can't tell," Donat's eyes back and forth in concentration, reading the hololithic reports intently. Had the man been able to his lip would have been curled and his brow furrowed, "The ships machine spirit is... disobeying me. I do not know why, this is Sácomer's area of expertise not my own. All I can tell you for sure is that the warp drive and guns are inoperative. "

"Figure it out Mr. Enzo," Sácomer would be of no use to them. Nor had authorized treatment for Sácomer's hysterical blubbering and near psychotic sorrow with a shot of Demeros extract. Provided that they could convince Sácomer to come back on duty it was unlikely that he'd be of use for anything more complicated than watching his own hand wave. Throne but that insufferable lush was turning out to be a liability.

"Sir I do not know what I'm supposed to do, all my status reports claim that the power is being properly routed to the guns, but the guns are not receiving any power." Donat cut in curtly. In his frustration Donat grabbed one of the hovering servo skulls. The skull screeched in protest as Donat banged in on the keyboard. Small fragments of bone cracked off with every collision upon the gilded marble runes, "There is no system error. I cannot find anything wrong with the system. Power is being drawn from the reactors but it is not going to the guns. There simply isn't anything wrong."

"Then it is not the Amon Sui," Sáclair drummed his fingers upon the arm of his throne, his skin crawling from the implication, "The Amon are not elegant enough for this sort of work. It would take the knowledge of a... of a Magos..." The word hit him like a cannon shot, knocking the breath out of him and sending him reeling. Sáclair closed his eyes immersed himself within the ship, not just passively so but bathing himself in the sensation of each individual system of the _Endless Bounty_.

It did not take long before he realized that the _Endless Bounty_, normally so willing and pliant to his every caress, was leading him on paths away from where he wished to go. His subtle nudges to the left would lead him right, he would go up in the system hierarchy and discover that he was in a totally unrelated subroutine. Mazes within mazes, traps within traps. Someone had turned his own ship against him.

It was worse than the worst violation of his trust. His ship, his body in ways more real than his moral husk could ever be had been turned against him. He felt sick, as though he were being used and discarded like the lowest of scullery maids to catch her master's eye. Someone had twisted his ship, his body and was using it against his will and judgment.

And he knew exactly to whom he must attribute this trespass. With each new twist and turn away from him that the ship's spirit twisted he screamed in his own mind, "Magos scum! Traitor! Reviler! Betrayer!" Sáclair wasn't sure if it was his own anger or that of his ancestors that boiled in his veins and set fire to all the rage he'd been holding in his heart. This was a torture of the mind to rival any of the flesh. And he would not stand for it, "No more, never again"

He could feel another presence within the ship's mind struggling against him to build new barriers within the ship's code. Dazzling lines of binary tried to bind him with cords of redundant code. Streams of logic attempted to sever him from the ships system. Resplendent data worms writhed about him, wriggling maggots searching for the weaknesses in his armor.

However the bloodline of Sáclair would not be stopped. He smashed the paper thin barriers of misdirection, crushing the elaborate halls of glass and mirrors hidden within the ship's spirit, freeing it from the invader. Victory was inevitable; the bounty was destined to be one with Sáclair.

The invader, seeing defeat in sight, released hold of the ships systems. The entrance by which the usurper entered the system was scourged, all traces of their identity purged from the system. It could never be proven who had done it without a shadow of a doubt. But Sáclair knew, he'd known from the first second he felt the elegance and poise of her defenses. He'd known as soon as his attacker had avoided trying to damage any necessary systems in the assault. The truly great betrayers were always those seeking to do no harm.

The power has been shunted away from weapons and into the shields. It was a clever way to avoid detection, innovative even. Almost as elegant as the way in which the psychical energy shunt had been hidden from him. Kerrigan had always been urbane; it was only fitting that her betrayal should be just as magnificent.

Magos obviously defied his orders, continuing work on an escape plan for the Inquisitor.

Sáclair opened his eyes and reached for a ruby command rune in the center of his private controls. The blood red stone gave way beneath his finger satisfyingly, sounding warning klaxons throughout the ship. There was battle to be done if he was going to salvage what was left of this, "I need the Lionhearts at full battle readiness. Find the Magos now. "

The astropathic indicator sounded over the battle klaxons, shrill whine adding to the din. Sáclair massaged his temples and manipulated the runes on his throne to display the combat heads up display on the great hololithic projector, "Of course the Earth Alliance fleet is early. Why wouldn't they be? It only stands to reason that with everything else that's..."

His furious rant turned to blind panic as he got a good look at the Battlecruiser, three escort ships, and their accompanying fighters that appeared from the swirling blue wormholes of light at the edge of the holo-display. He recognized them immediately, how could he not? They were smaller than the ships Faust had unearthed on Belzafest but the resemblance was unmistakable, though absent of black flesh and spines that the heretic warship held.

"Blood of The Emperor... Faust," the bastard had found them. And he'd come prepared, "Shields to maximum, evasive pattern E, and get me my damn guns online."

* * *

"流口水的婊子和猴子的笨兒子" Captain Li Xingjian's statement was colorful as always. Vorlon ships were uncommon; a man might go his entire lifetime without catching more than a glimpse of a Vorlon transport. One most certainly did not see a full Vorlon assault fleet, "What are they doing here?"

"We're receiving a transmission from them sir," Ensign Daniels cupped the headphone to his ear, listening intently. The Vorlons had a frustrating habit of transmitting demands in Interlac rather than actually responding to hails. His nose scrunched with confusion, "They're saying... The third must not be. The third will end."

"And the rest of it?" Klaus said, "The third of what?"

"They didn't say sir. They just said 'the third must not be. The third will end." Daniels shook his head looking down at his consul, "They're not transmitting any more. That was the whole message."

"Apparently someone does get that message. The Imperials have activated shields and are moving closer to the planet's gravity well," Ensign Peter's said from her spot at telemetry, "And they've deployed fighters... they've deployed a lot of fighters."

"Does Babylon 5 have any cameras out there?" Klaus leaned over the Ensign, perusing the data with great interest. Klaus was always thinking, always plotting. He was a stiff and boring sod, but he wasn't a slouch.

"On the main screen," Li waved his fingers expectantly. The monitor flashed to a scene on the far side of the planet. The _Endless Bounty_ was hidden in a cluster of space debris, taking refuge behind the remains of a shattered Sharlin. The image flickered and blurred at odd moments, distorted by the cloud of radioactive gasses left over by the Sharlin's explosion.

"Sáclair is a crafty bastard I'll give him that," chuckled Klaus, "Whatever these shields are they play all merry hell with the surrounding radiation. Targeting individual fighters would be a nightmare in that."

"Not crafty enough I suspect," Li chuckled darkly. Tricks and games would work on many of the known races but the Vorlon reputation was well earned. Stories of entire war fleets disappearing after entering Vorlon space were more than mere myth. Legends given flesh and form.

Green darts flashed across distant space, a perverse beauty in their deadliness. They split from the Vorlon cruisers like flowering buds caught in a spring wind, elegantly twirling through the gaseous debris of Epsilon III. The flowering buds split into two groups, parting way for pulsing lances of Energy. The vicious verdant blast lanced through the gaseous debris and collided with the defensive screens of the _Endless Bounty_, exploding with a flaring pulse of radiation.

The image flickered into a deafening burst of static, the robot carrying the camera and likely any others in viewing distance of the Imperial ship had been rendered inoperative. Not that Li needed to see anything, his course of action was clear, "All hands to battle stations. Prepare targeting solutions for the Vorlon ships."

The bridge crew examined him with mixed looks of shock and horror. Obscured by bandages bruises and burns terrified eyes stared at him, clearly believing him mad. Klaus tapped his ears, apparently checking that they were still in working order, "Firing solutions on the Vorlons sir?"

"They've opened fire on a ship in Earth Alliance territory. I will not allow my personal feelings to undermine my duties as an Earthforce officer and we will not allow foreign powers to fight their wars in our space. Sheridan was abundantly clear in his orders that the _Endless Bounty_ was under Earthforce protection," Li gnashed his teeth in irritation. The timing of this was too convenient. Sheridan knew that the Vorlons were coming, he had to have known. This was a ploy to discredit Li and his fellow officers, a plot to force them to disobey direct orders by not acting.

Well Li would not fall for it. And if Sheridan took the heat for getting the Earth Alliance in military conflict with the Vorlons that would simply be an added bonus. They may die, but there were worse things than death in the service of one's nation. Li would not make himself less of a man. He bellowed at the still gaping Klaus, "What are you waiting for? Launch fighters, and tell the commanders of what remains of our fleet to do the same. I'm taking command of this fight. "

Klaus swallowed and shook his head, visibly ill at the idea of fighting the Vorlons, "Sir I cannot comply with that order. It is insane."

"You have questioned my orders twice now Lt. Meyer. Do it a third time and I will have you arrested, taken to the brig, and court marshaled," Li narrowed his eyes and spat on the ground, a green globule of phlegm splattering on Klaus' polished leather shoes, "Complete my orders, now."

"Yes sir," Klaus nearly swallowed his tongue. The German was a proud and clever man but he was a coward. A little boy who joined the Army to play soldier but didn't want to play any more when the other team has better toys. Well all little boys had to grow up sooner or later.

The lights dimmed from sterile white to ominous sanguine red, setting the mood for the carnage to come. The view-screen's blurry mess of static gave way to a tactical display of Epsilon III, fed through the Babylon Five battle network. Blurry mass of dark blue sensor haze fluttered about in a dizzying surge from the hyperspace gate. Shimmering echoes the only real indicators that the Vorlon ships even existed.

His ship's engines were not operating at peak efficiency, even after the repairs they'd managed to do in the past day he could only hope for half speed at best. The other ships in the fleet weren't in substantially better states; none of them had been prepared for combat so soon. They needed at least another week in the dry docks to re-supply and repair but needs were musts, or so the saying goes.

He would accept the challenge.

He would win.

He was a survivor.

* * *

The Enginseer's maintenance corridors had been designed for ensuring the safety of the crew during a meltdown or depressurization. The long stretches of corridor were broken up by regularly occurring bulkheads and barriers, guarded by servitors and the Enginseers themselves.

He'd never even remotely considered that the ship's own defenses might be used by mutineers, much less by Magos Kerrigan. It was some small consultation that the men he'd assigned to guarding the entrance corridor to the teleporter had not accepted Kerrigan's mutiny. Provided that he could piece the bodies back together to figure out who'd been on duty they would get full military honors at their funerals.

Kerrigan was twenty bulkheads and a half mile of corridor filled with war servitors and servants of the Magos away from the Lionhearts. But nobody could stand up to the might of the Lionhearts onboard the _Endless Bounty_, or anywhere else for that matter. And Kerrigan was facing the entire might of the Lionhearts. Not a man jack had been left behind, save those too ill or too young for combat. Even so they were stretched thin; groups of twenty had been deployed to each of the computer terminals or power stations she could potentially be conducting operations from. None of which could be reached without breaching station defenses.

Even the aging Maziv had been conscripted into helping take down the rogue Magos. Not that they could have stopped him from coming even if the old fox had been ordered to stay behind once Danzig issued a code red alert over the Lionheart's comm. net. Maziv retired from heading the Lionhearts decades ago in practice, but never in spirit. The man was near blind in his milky white left eye and his legs cracked audibly when he ran but put a gun in that man's hands and he could work magic with it. In place of himself Danzig give Maziv the duty of guarding Sáclair, it would keep the old man out of harm's way without harming his pride or sense of duty.

He held up his fist and swept his open palm behind him, his fingers shifting in staccato hand talk to the company of men behind him. They lay belly to the floor on the wide staircase leading to the main repository of the ship's machine spirit. "Ten servitors at the door, unknown servo skulls overhead, they don't seem to have spotted anyone yet, snipers take your shots."

Ozone crackled and sparked past his face, white hot beams of energy rocketing across the corridor and bursting the bulbous bodied servitors like ripe melon. The skulls hissed and swarmed the Lionhearts. Their distorted screaming cries echoed off of the high gothic stonework of the ceiling, giving a disturbing musical cadence to the flying servitors.

Danzig fired into the mass of skulls with his plasma gun, burning a handful to cinders. His whoop of victory was short lived as he tumbled backwards in an acrobatic dodge. Gibbering skulls sliced his retreating form with cutting torches, scorching the hem of his patterned silk trousers. He smashed the offending machines with the butt of his rifle snarling as one of them cut his thigh, staining the silk a deeper shade of crimson, "Breaching team advance and blow the bulkhead. Cover them!"

The newly promoted Sgt. Hamman cackled with perverse glee as he slowly waded forwards at the head of his newly formed squad, keeping the swarms of skulls at bay with his beloved flamethrower. His men fired into the advancing swarms with shotguns between gouts of fire, shattering bone and electronics in a hail of shrapnel. The tight circle protected two men hefting innocuous double barreled contraptions, deceptive in their banality. The multi-melta was one of the deadliest hand held anti-armor weapons in the imperial arsenal. Once fired the device would agitate the subatomic structure of its target, literally cooking it from the inside out. Flesh and metal would burn away with ease.

"Movement upper service corridor six o' clock high," Sergei's voice whispered across the hallway, spirited directly into Danzig's ear through his comm. bead, "We got company."

"Ours or theirs?" Whispered one of the new recruits, the fear in his eyes emphasized by the baby fat still hanging from narrow cheeks. The boy should be learning his letters, not fighting on the front lines. Throne had they come to this? Sending children to fight, it was barbaric.

Danzig ducked into the relative cover of an alcove and pulled out his field glasses, squinting towards the distant scaffolding. Overlooking Sergei's position thirty yards down the corridor in front of their exit route. He could just make out the shape of hooded men fumbling with something before dropping to the ground, fumbling with something on a tripod, "Theirs! Sergei it's a crow's nest! Take cover."

"Where?" snarled the furious voice of Sergei, "Throne help us. We designed this damn corridor to be a slaughterhouse to anyone stupid enough to attack it."

The multi-laser twittered eagerly, firing green death into the men below. There was nowhere for the soldiers to run. Danzig snapped his field glasses shut, ill at the sight of his old companion Bal'tha's cooked and blackened chest. The Lionhearts opened fire on the scaffolding, but there was no way to get a line of sight on the gunners without throwing oneself in direct line of fire with the gun.

It was too far for grenades, too far for plasma fire or meta-fire. Damn and blast how were they going to take that damnable crow's nest out?

Three cracks echoed into the scaffolding, brilliant bolts of laser fire cutting into the robed men crouching with the tripod. Three heads dropped listlessly to the ground. Sala'ha's reaction times improved since Belzafest it would seem. The man swayed back and forth from his perch on a massive bass relief, nestled between an enormous marble nostril and a curving obsidian scrap of mustache. How Sala'ha had even managed to climb the face that quickly was a mystery but one should never look a gift grox in the mouth.

"Hamman I need that door open," Dazig snarled over his comm. bead, "Those three weren't part of the ship's automated defenses. She's here. She's in here."

The two multi-meltas opened fire upon the bulkhead with a humming growl. There was no bright flash or muzzle flare to indicate fire, only a hazy column of buzzing distortion and a bright patch of heating metal on the door. The air in the passageway shifted with the abrupt introduction of the new heat source, wafting the sickly sweet odor of scorched flesh into Danzig's nostrils. It disturbed him that the scent no longer disquieted his stomach.

Two minutes and they'd break through the first barrier to the next round of defenses. Twenty layers of two more minutes at a time while the ship was helpless. Damn Kerrigan's arrogance, damn her to the pit.

She would kill them all.

* * *

John crossed the threshold of the CnC, only dimly aware that he was leading Father Al'Ashir and Delenn. At what point was he going to get to just wake up from this nightmare? The Vorlons were staging a military operation in Earth Alliance territory. On his station, "No more."

Pushing Al'Ashir down into a chair next to a burnt out control consul and holstering his firearm John grabbed a status report from an exhausted Lt. Corwin. The Lieutenant parroted back a slipshod salute at John before a jumbled rush of words tumbled unintelligibly from his lips. The Lieutenant swallowed shook his head and continued in a more coherent fashion, sparing a look for Delenn and the priest, "Sir the Vorlons have opened fire on the _Endless Bounty_ outside the operational range of our station defenses."

"Just perfect," John watched the distant green lances of energy, his heart pounding in his ears. The Vorlon ships were stronger than even the Minbari, far beyond even the best of the Earth Alliance Navy, "Can we scramble fighters in time?"

"I already gave the order as soon as they started shooting sir," Lt. Corwin stuttered over the word 'order,' clearly uncomfortable to take responsibility for military action against the Vorlon ships, "When Captain Xingjian issued the order to protect the _Endless Bounty_ I..."

"Captain Xingjian?" Sheridan cut in incredulously. Xingjian's temper was second only to his stubbornness, so soon after suffering a defeat at the hands of the _Endless Bounty_ Sheridan believed Xingjian would have to be dragged into the fight kicking and screaming the whole way, "Are the other ships fighting as well."

"Yes sir, what is left of Major Pearce's fleet has moved to assist the Imperial ship," Lt. Corwin shook his head, "But it won't be enough sir. Not even close."

"Show me," John said in resignation, waving at the view screen in annoyance, "And send a distress call to General Hague. We need his relief fleet here yesterday."

"Yes sir."

"And for God's sake somebody get a communication line open with the Imperials so they know who the friendlies in this fight are!"

"Garibaldi wants to know if you think it's safe to open the doors to the docking bay yet,"

"Captain," Delenn walked across the room and rested the fingers of her left hand in the center of his back, a gesture deliberately platonic in its pleading intimacy. They trembled slightly as she leant down see the tactical readout, "You need to trust Kosh. There are things that you do not know, that you can not know."

John brushed her arm aside, anger simmering just beneath his skin. He gripped her wrist tightly and growled through clenched teeth, "Then tell me. What is it that I should know? What is it that I need to understand? Why should I ignore the Vorlon war fleet attacking the people who just saved my station?"

"The wisdom of the older races isn't always immediately clear," Delenn pulled her wrist back and continued with a look of supreme serenity that clashed greatly with her torn robes and tousled hair, "But understanding is not important, only obedience."

"Ambassador I am not Minbari. I do not obey orders to murder an entire species without question," the insult left his mouth before he'd considered the severity of it. The words impacted with Delenn like a freight train, crushing her spirit faster than even the demon could have managed. Her eyes quivered with emotion as he asked, "Why am I to stop?"

"The Vorlons have their reasons," Delenn swallowed, "They aren't always obvious but..."

"But they're killing people on my station all the same," John shook his head, "Delenn, Kosh outright slaughtered a dozen people on my station without so much as a hello. If that is the sort of wisdom he's espousing then I want nothing to do with it."

Real pain tinted her voice as she spoke the words, "Captain, please... you cannot defeat them."

"I'm hoping not to have to," John nodded. A plan, nebulous though it was, formed in his head, "I'm hoping this can be resolved but I need your help. I need to stop the violence before we end up with a war between the Vorlons and Empire with Earth in the middle."

"War," Delenn's voice hitched and she closed her eyes tightly, steeling herself for what came next, "What do you want me to do?"

"It's time to reconnect with an old friend," John pointed at the display, tapping his finger upon Epsilon III, "One I believe might be able to help."

* * *

"I need good news Mr. Enzo," Sáclair felt the dart ships of emptiness flying around him like bats in the dark. He could practically kiss the wake of their engines as they plowed their way through space. They sliced at the sides of the _Endless Bounty_ beam weapons hitting the ships shields with disturbing accuracy and competence. Every way he turned, no matter how he moved the darts always seemed to be skimming along the surface of the ship's void shields, tearing at it with implacable resolve.

"Fighter wings are reporting no significant success. The damn fighters can take a hit from a lascannon and keep on kicking," Mr. Enzo punched Sácomer's control station in frustration, "We still have control of the anti-aircraft point defense batteries but they aren't strong enough to kill the fighters without concentrated hits to the same location."

The control room shook and pain burst in Sáclair's head. One of the enemy cruisers got a good shot in on the ship's bow as he jinked to escape the spine-chilling torrent of power fired by the battle-cruiser. That ships so small could contain the raw power of this magnitude was inconceivable.

How had Faust found them? How had he made so many ships in such a short time?

Sáclair had no guns, no warp drive, and no hope.

Blind and bound, the astropathic servitor chained to the great Throne began to speak in a voice altogether unsuited for her lithe body. A deep guttural reverberating snarl snuck from her lips, inhuman and reverberating. Her eyes glowed and her body twisted in shock, fighting the presence of the incoming astropathic transmission, "Surrender and die."

"They haven't mastered the whole ultimatum thing yet have they?" Sáclair quipped in disgust, a sensation of wild vertigo overtaking him as he bucked the ship down along it's z axis in a vain attempt to avoid a shot from the lead bioship. The green energy pulse bend to follow them as they moved, arking to glance along the stern. Only partially stopped by the voild shields of the Endless Bounty the attack gouged the adamantium hull, sounding decompression alarms in several recently repaired sections of hull.

"The Beijing Beauty and her sister ships are advancing on us sir," Donat chewed his lip in an uncharacteristic display of emption. "They've launched fighters."

"Damned treacherous snakes," Sáclair watched the blue triangles soar across his heads up display. Dozens of the starfury fighters, bearing down on them like bats out of hell, "Raring for another fight then are they?"

"Wait!" Navigator Illrich hissed, chiropteran nostrils flaring as his portrait flashed over the communications net. His wide black pupiled eyes crinkled with delighted zeal, "We're getting data from the tactical officer on the Babylon station. Throne be praised the Alliance fighters are coming to help."

"Fantastic, tell the fighter wings not to shoot the Alliance without provocation. It could still be a ploy on their part but at this point I won't turn anyone's help down," Sáclair continued to send the fire command to his gun batteries in impotent fury. Again and again depressing the firing controls in the direction of his attackers, again and again failing to fire.

The Earth Alliance cruisers fired into the Vorlon ships, but to little effect. The electronic countermeasures troubling the _Endless Bounty_ must be causing hellish problems for the Alliance ships. Lances shot across the solar system only to miss their targets, disappearing harmlessly into the distance. It was like firing blindly into shadows.

Nothing, nothing at all. Damn, he'd been hoping that the Alliance would be better equipped for countering the bioship's defenses. They were altogether different from those used by the bioship Faust had used over Belzafest. Where the ship over Belzafest had been an empty void of nothing, the bioships attacking them now broadcast their presence overwhelmingly. Targets a hundred times too large to possibly be the bioships forced themselves into the _Endless Bounty_'s sensor readings.

And it would seem that Faust learned from his mistake on Belzafest. The first effort to target the ship psychically ended badly for the unfortunate psychic tasked with targeting it. The poor bastard's head exploded in an astonishing shower of gore.

"Come on damn it, come on," Snarled Sáclair. He nearly took the head off of the serving girl who brought him a goblet of wine in his haste to drink it, tipping it back to his lips and savoring the sweet dryness of it, "Have at you then!"

The shapes danced around the _Endless Bounty_, blue triangles, crimson eagles, and green darts. A dart blinked out, then another, then a third, but too late. For each dart that disappeared a handful of red eagles and blue triangles simply disappeared.

"Sir!" The soot stained face of Mr. Andrews popped into view, "The Enginseers have managed to jury rig a manual firing device for the forward torpedoes."

"Well then," Sáclair shifted his shoulders eagerly, glad to have some bite to go with his bark, "We shall just have to make them count then shan't we? Hard to stern. Order Markusk's Raiders to assault the lead ship with their bombers."

"Markusk's Raiders," Donat clucked in understandable confusion. Markusk was under suspicion of collaborating with the Amon Sui onboard the ship. An odd choice for a high profile mission, "Sir, what are you planning to shoot at, there's no way we can target those ships. Their countermeasures are just too comprehensive."

"The defenses on those battleships are indeed too comprehensive," Sáclair swirled the dregs about his goblet in disgust, "The scrambling technologies on Markusk's bombers are not."

If nothing else he would get the pleasure of ridding himself of a handful of Amon Sui traitors today. One must always look for a silver lining after all. Donat relayed his orders without protest a cluster of the eagles soared across the hololith and into the blurry spot. A mess of green darts followed them, picking them off one by one.

First one eagle disappeared, then another, then another, and so on till there were only three eagles left. Their blurry forms fidgeted and twisted distantly on the display as they pierced the blurry bubbles, dogfighting with the darts around the lead ship of the trio.

Sáclair focused on the triangle of fighters, using it as a makeshift reticule. The torpedoes crossed the distance in moments, reaching their targets and exploding with nightmarish force. It wasn't spectacularly accurate, but then it really hadn't needed to be. The so called "planet cracker" torpedoes loaded into the forward tubes were a special payload requisitioned by Inquisitor Hilder intended for possible Exterminatus situations. The four cyclonic warheads exploded just beyond the fighters, engulfing a pocket of space in a bright blast of atomic fire.

The center blip disappeared.

"Reload the forward batteries," Sáclair whooped with glee, "And prepare another fighter wing." They'd exhausted the supply of planet cracker missiles brought by the Inquisitor but be damned Sáclair intended to make them bleed for every inch of space they wanted."

* * *

Vir wanted to be sick. He wanted to run. He wanted to hide. He wanted to crawl back into his nice warm bed and forget that he'd seen dying men, or attacking demons, or even furious Vorlon. However to achieve any of that he would first have to make sure that he managed to survive the next ten minutes or so.

Though he appeared to be the only one sane enough to have survival as an immediate goal. The Inquisitor was delirious with pain and clearly going into septic shock but insisted upon firing his side arm at the Vorlon with his remaining arm, ignoring the searing gouts of flame and energy being tossed by the Vorlon and Deamonhost like child's playthings.

The impressive servitors lay in heaps of charnel and smoking electronics. Smoking offal and wires covered a majority of the floor, squelching disgustingly underneath Vir's feet. He was dimly aware of how covered in gore he was, but it was a passing concern at best provided his own insides stayed on the inside.

Losiencheoir's claws sliced through the Volron's belly, tossing the Vorlon back ten paces and spraying a stream of crystalline pink blood across the deck plates. Losiencheoir's cry of victory turned to a howl of fury as the crystalline blood bathing his face and arms began to eat through bone and flesh like acid. The great beast flensed itself of the affected areas, talons exposing black hunks of muscle and white bone.

It took a moment for Vir to realize that the warning klaxons for the air lock were sounding; the flashing red lights and resounding horns subdued by comparison to the howls and blasts of the deamonhost and Vorlon. It was the sucking sensation and the sudden breeze that clued him in, a pleasant wafting of cool air.

He grabbed Vira'capac's arm, taking great care to avoid the spines, and wispered in terror, "They're opening this docking bay! We need to get to shelter."

"Alliance man things pick inconceivably inconvenient moments." The Kroot trilled in fury, his throat undulating in a series of shrill dolphin like clicks. His hounds came to heel immediately, hackles raised in anticipation, "Come then, safety is first."

Uncaring of the danger Demonhost and Vorlon continued their mid-air battle. Psychic might and raw demonic fury collided in cascading bursts of power and rage. The Vorlon's encounter suit was in shambles, a crumpled and shredded mess of Mylar and biotech. The crimson eye's iris struggled to fix on a single point in the distance, clicking endlessly in the effort to see properly. But only a fool would mistake that for weakness.

Broken and bloodied though the Vorlon may be, it was more than holding its own with Losenchior. The recent demonhost snarled in undisguised fury. It wasn't just fighting the Vorlon because it was ordered to, or because brutality was in the demonhost's nautre, there was some thing personal in the brutality of the Demonhost's attacks on the Vorlon. Losiencheoir wanted to harm Kosh as much as he possibly could.

Vira'capac reached out and grabbed Daul by his wounded arm, talons digging deep into the Inquisitor's injured flesh. The Inquisitor cried out in agony, hopping to keep up with Vira'capac's taloned fingers as the Kroot warrior hustled him along. The Kroot ignored the constant string of incoherent gothic profanity with mild professional amusement, occasionally arching an eyebrow at a particularly interesting phrasing.

The Inquisitor's vocabulary of profanity was apparently voluminous.

"Man thing will not die here. Is not time, not time for either of us. Too easy, not finished," Vira'capac chided the Inquisitor as they reached the Imperial shuttlecraft, "Man thing not a coward. Will stop acting like one."

The towering techpriest Tuul was already at the lander, disconnecting power and fuel lines from the station and shepherding the human psychics onboard. Tuul gave Vir an odd look as the Centauri boarded the landing craft, but shook it off at an annoyed glance from the Kroot. Vir could only assume his presence on board went against custom. Well too bad, this was a highly uncustomary situation and he was going to get out of it in one piece.

Cairn, the bionic manservant of Inquisitor Daul, was already strapped into a seat. That is to say what remained of him was. Bionic stumps sparked and dripped viscous grey fluid where the Skitarii was missing both arms and both legs. The mess of mechanical tentacles that hung from the man's face slithered and clasped in obvious agony, silent where the speaker box at his throat had ceased to function.

The cyborg's eyes focused upon his master's missing arm, briefly oblivious to his own pain. He recognized the look, even through cybernetic optics. He'd seen it too often in his own mirror after talking to his relatives. Somehow the Skitarii's despair was made deafening in it's silence, as Cairn watched Vira'capac push the Inquisitor down into a seat before buckling the hounds into place.

Tuul ducked through the door and muttered furiously to himself in frustrated monotone, sparing a longing glance for the distant airlock. He made curious spidery symbol with his fingers towards the locked bulkhead leading to customs before closing the doors to the transport, "Deus autem machinenen katsieb sid mine Lehrlinge."

Vir opened his mouth to ask what he'd said, but the Kroot tapped his finger across the pointed tip of his beak in imitation of the human gesture for silence then steepled his fingers and bowed once. Some sort of prayer then. Well it was as good of a time for it as any.

An ugly man with a thick mess of braided beards popped his head in from the cockpit, clearly eager to be off of Babylon five as quickly as was possible. The ugly man waved at the humans, growling in the guttural Imperial tongue. Inquisitor Daul muttered a curt affirmative and waved the man back to the cockpit, yanking off the golden skull from his head and revealing deeply bloodshot eyes.

He smiled to Vir, "I would hold on tightly Mr. Cotto. Captain Sheridan will vent the docking bay long before we've activated the Engines and I'm afraid that our transition will be a good deal more bumpy than you're accustomed to."

There was a loud crash of changing pressures and Vir coughed as he was yanked forward in his chair as the ship transitioned from the artificial gravity inside of the station to the low gravity outside of it. The ship tumbled and turned wildly, thunderously colliding with unsecured cargo crates and damaged bits of bulkhead as everything not tied down found itself sucked into the vacuum of space.

The hounds, uncomfortable in their seats, stood up and tried to balance themselves properly. The sounds of skittering talons on deck plates and annoyed whimpering filled the cabin as they hounds hovered near weightlessly above the deck plates, unable to move.

Bright green light flashed past the port side of the ship, illuminating the distant forms of the still battling demonhost and Vorlon as they disappeared from view. The raging battle disappeared into the distance as the sounds of battle chatter crackled over the communications system from the cockpit. The Inquisitor rhythmically repeated the same ten words, over and over again, counting down on his fingers as he went. He counted for thirteen counts of thirteen before opening his bloodshot eyes and screaming for the artificial gravity to be activated.

The hounds fell to the ground in a frustrated heap, barking and baying in confusion. The larger hound, the one with a scar across its eye, rested its head in Vir's lap cooing. Vir hesitantly scratched the creature behind the ear, and was rewarded by an amused purring trill. The smaller hound quickly asserted itself as well, making sure to get it's share of attention.

The Inquisitor stood and marched over to a relatively open patch of deck, sitting down cross legged and pulling a knife from his belt. He stabbed the knife into his arm and let the blood drip down in a stream onto the deck. Shaking fingers extended into the pool, spreading it into a crude pentagram. He stabbed the knife into the center of it and chanted in the same unnatural language he'd spoken to bind the demon to Amis.

A sour flavor filled the air as the solid metal of the deck bubbled within the pentagram, a boiling pool of blood roiling and seething on the floor. The bloodied and wounded form of the demonhost appeared in the center of the circle, howling in dissatisfaction. Losiencheoir beat his fists on the barrier of the circle, impotently protesting having been taken from the fight.

"He was mine. I had him!" The creature mewled petulantly, "I could taste victory."

"You do not fight for your own amusement creature," Inquisitor Hilder snapped his fingers, "You obey my will and my whims. Remember that. Now I order you to not fight anything without my expressed orders, I order you to not speak, to not listen to anyone who isn't me, to not see anything I don't give you permission to see, and to not even move or breathe without my sayso. You will get into the casket onboard intended for astropathic servitors and you will stay there till I say otherwise. Do you understand?"

The creature stared hatefully at the Inquisitor, saying nothing. Inquisitor Hilder's eyes narrowed, "Thrice I speak and done, do you understand?"

"Yes," The demonhost said in disgust, "I hear and obey." It floated into a metal casket on the starboard side of the ship, pulling the casket closed with insulting servitude. Hilder pressed his bloodied handprint into the casket muttered a few guttural words. Spidery lines of runic protection wept out from his handprint, covering the casket and binding the creature therein.

"Miserable monster," The Inquisitor hissed as he pulled a bag of salt and spread it over the blood on the floor, "Disgusting creature." He slumped in a seat, grudgingly permitting Vira'capac to buckle him in a second time. Exhaustion and pain caught up with him as he passed into unconsciousness.

As Vir allowed himself to melt into his own chair, idly enjoying petting the hounds and breathing easily for the first time in hours, he realized that the Inquisitor had chosen to speak his commands to Losiencheoir in English for his benefit. He wanted Vir to know that he'd chosen to avoid conflict with the Vorlon. He wanted the human psychics to remember how powerful he was. Even broken and bloodied the Inquisitor continued to plan and scheme.

It was no wonder Londo liked him.

* * *

They'd destroyed a Vorlon warship. The Imperials destroyed a _Vorlon_ warship. Li's mouth salivated at the though of gaining weaponry with that level of destructive potential. Even outdated versions of the Imperial sensors would be a coup.

Not that it was likely they'd ever get them from the _Endless Bounty_. When the Vorlon ship exploded a shrill howl of fury had echoed over the comm. net from the Vorlon ships, a baleful moan of despair and agony. There hadn't been any words but none had really needed to be spoken. A line had been crossed that they could never forgive.

The Vorlon fighters retreated to their cruisers, taking up defensive postures against the imperial fighters. The crimson Imperial gunships were no match for the Vorlon fighters working in concert. And the Vorlons weren't about to give the Imperials flagship a second shot at them.

Not just the Imperials Li realized.

There was no way the invaders could allow the Alliance ships to live. The Vorlons couldn't afford for anyone with tactical knowledge of that nature to spread it to the known worlds. No Empire willingly sacrificed its tactical superiority. There were two Vorlon ships between them and the Hyperspace gate and unless the Imperials could pull out another miracle shot they were up the creek.

The hobbled and already maimed Alliance ships were poor matches for the Vorlon fleet.

The Zeus died first, a lance of green energy from one of the Vorlon fighters gutting the carrier stem to stern like a salmon. The crew hadn't even had time to reach the escape pods before it exploded. Another wing of Vorlon fighters nearly took the Beijing Beauty but the timely intervention of an Imperial fighter wing forced them to redirect and gave the Starfuries a chance to get back into defensive positions around the Earth Alliance ships.

"Keep firing towards the Vorlons," Li chewed his lip, "If we cannot target them intentionally we can at least slow their advance and give Captain Sáclair time enough for another salvo."

The Mercury, still hobbled by its half repaired engines, froze in space as a glancing blast of energy collided with its rear. The oblong ship split in two, it's main cabin severing the main pylon and tossing the ships reactors away. It listed helplessly in space as a second salvo hit its bridge, boring a hole clear though the ship.

"Sir we have new sensor contacts. Fifteen additional hyperspace windows are inbound," Ensign Peters broke through Li's melancholy, "Not the relief fleet sir."

"Of course it isn't," Klaus grunted in a long suffering voice, "That would be too convenient."

"Who is it then," Li didn't particularly care who, so long as it wasn't another fifteen Vorlon ships. Every second they got was a second longer that they'd have to think. The Vorlons were forced to tactically reposition to face the newcomers.

"Waiting for confirmation sir," Peters' fingers danced across the keyboard, shaking with adrenaline. The blocky grey shapes on the main viewer rasterized into recognizable ship configurations in a matter of moments. Peters' voice colored in understandable confusion, "We have confirmation, they're a combined fleet of Centauri... and Narn warships."

"Well then," Li laughed, "This is new."

"The lead Centauri warship is sending us a transmission sir. They're here to help," Ensign Daniels did not bother asking if they would accept the Centauri military aide. It was redundant at this point, "We're receiving their transponder signals and battle network."

"Centauri and Narn warships," Li massaged his throbbing temples, "Why not. As hell has clearly decided that today was the appropriate time to freeze over it seems like an appropriate time for the two of them to get along."

"What do I tell them sir?"

Li slapped the ensign on the shoulder, "Welcome to the party."

* * *

Londo stood on the bridge of the Primus Battlecruiser, more terrified than he had ever been in his entire life as he watched the battle unfold. What had he been thinking to engage in this madness? It had been fear. Fear of Morden's ever tightening grip on his people, fear of his terrifying invisible associates. He'd allowed fear to dictate his actions and now here he was, leading warships against the Vorlons.

Not that he'd known it would be the Vorlons when Mr. Morden demanded his favor; only that it was someone Mr. Morden's associates did not defy directly for political reasons.

He'd called in virtually every favor his newfound popularity earned him. If this failed, as it seemed doomed to, house Mollari would be spoken of only in terrified whispers behind closed doors as ghost stories to children. A parable warning about the consequences of ambition without reason. Provided that they survived the use of force would be considered legal, the Babylon Five defense treaty demands that in the event that the station, or a ship in its space, is attacked by any member nation of the Babylon Five advisory council and demands help that all available warships come to the aid of the aforementioned station and docked ships.

Not everyone on the home-world agreed would agree. Amassing the handful of Centauri warships had been virtually political difficult but that paled in comparison to the social suicide of allying himself with the Narn publicly. But the use of Narn was a condition of his deal with Mr. Morden; his ego would be the price of his liberty.

G'Kar nearly swallowed his tongue with laughter when Londo requested a joint military operation. The poetic irony of Mollari being forced to turn to G'Kar too much for the Narn to take. There were hundreds of kilometers of vacuum between Londo's flagship and the Narn G'Quan cruiser he knew held G'Kar and Londo knew, he absolutely knew that he could hear the Narn Ambassador chuckling at his expense.

But he'd agreed. Agreed to help defend the Imperials from an unspecified threat, G'Kar had been surprisingly credulous about the need to bring military aide to the station. He'd raved about demons and the coming darkness but one could always rely upon the Narn for incoherent religious ravings.

Now that he realized his intended foes were the Vorlons, Mollari was deeply grateful that he'd made the sacrifice. The most stalwart of warriors grew weak in the knees at the thought of facing a Vorlon vessel but even the most craven Centauri would not willingly show cowardice to a Narn.

If they backed down from the fight in pain view of the Narn warships they'd die of shame long before the Narn died of Vorlon laser fire. That was fine with Londo. He would gladly shape their hubris into a spear so long as he could toss it towards the Vorlon fleet in enough time to aid the _Endless Bounty_.

Captain Gauis Gerand was a distant cousin of Londo, taking after a paternal grandfather of Londo's famous for his wineries on the southern continent. More given to an air of decadence than command he was no less the commanding officer of the Primus Imperial Wisdom. smacked Londo's shoulder with a meaty paw and guffawed, "Well then we do have our work cut out for us then don't we old boy."

The combined fleet advanced, wedging themselves between the Vorlon ships and the hyperspace gate, flanking the pair of Vorlon ships and surrounding them from all sides. Tactically it was as unsound of a position for the Vorlon ships as he could imagine.

It seemed no one had bothered to inform the Vorlons of this. One of the escort cruisers turned back to the combined fleet and opened fire, destroying two Centauri ships and crippling the Narn flagship before they had a chance to return fire. The fleet advanced forwards, moving into defensive positions around the combined assets as they advanced on the Vorlon cruiser, forcing it to redirect its fire.

The Centauri flagship lagged behind next to the gate in an effort to maintain control of the escape route. Minutes passed with the bridge crew continuing with the normal business of battle before Londo noticed anything irregular.

"Why are you ignoring the cries for aid for the Blessed G'Taak," Londo asked, already knowing the answer.

"Oh come now Londo, you can bring your pets to play soldier if you want to but you can't seriously expect us to go out of our way for some stray mongrels can you? They're just Narn," Gaius chuckled in amusement, "We'll save them when they're ours, when they're worth the effort."

"No," Londo said in disgust, "You will save them now. We save theirs in the hopes they will save ours when and if the time comes."

"You do not order me on my own ship," Gauis' petulant appeal to authority was cut off mid sentence by the barrel of Londo's plasma pistol being pressed between his eyes. His piggy eyes focused on the trigger with a confused yelp of surprise.

"Yes. Actually I do," Londo grinned wolfishly, "Now, I believe you were planning on doing something about saving Narn Ambassador before I make the personally unfortunate decision of declaring you unfit for duty and replacing you. It would be a great deal of work and effort to smooth doing so with his majesty's court. Not impossible but more complicated than I have the energy for at the moment, and certainly more painful that you have time for."

"Yes..." Gaius stuttered in astonishment, "Do that then."

Londo stood in place smiling and waiting for his Gauis' men to carry out the order, "A wise decision."

* * *

Kerrigan was mildly aware of the head of her retinue as the aging Skitarii eyed the bulkhead. Xerrax hugged his rifle tighter, the old Skitarii as implacable as ever. Where Carin was silent by oath, Xerrax was simply silent by custom. The man could go days or months without saying a word or expressing an emotion. He stood stock still, staring at her attendants and apprentices.

They were all were terrified, and with good reason.

It had seemed so simple to start with. She would rescue the Inquisitor, and then rely upon his Inquisitorial pardon to forgive her having ignored the will of Captain Sáclair. Sáclair would not soon forgive her, possibly never, but she could rely upon his obedience to Inquisitor Hilder.

Re-assigning the work orders so that her people were in the right places to re-direct energy to the teleporters and put the power stations on lockdown had been as simple as signing her name. Her authority was second only to the Captain and Inquisitor, that she might be disobeying the one to aid the other never occurred to any of them.

It had been easy, too easy. Or so she'd thought. She hadn't properly accounted for the Captain's emotional state. Trapped by duty Sáclair had been on balanced on the razor's edge for weeks. If she'd been thinking properly she would never have pressed him at such a low point emotionally.

But if she was honest with herself her own emotions clouded her reason, even now. In her despair the Magos had actually convinced herself that Sáclair would bear an insult to his pride with grace, that he would not lash out at anyone who dared to engage in open mutiny.

A gross miscalculation.

Her mind was interfaced with the _Endless Bounty_. A mere shade in the domain of the great lion Sáclair, a moray latched to the mind of the great stellar leviathan. The_ Endless Bounty_ tolerated her intrusion, but not without protest. Sáclair and the _Endless Bounty_ fought her at every turn but one does not become a Magos through idleness. Twice she'd been cast from the system, only to find a third entry and erect a new maze of logic and reason for Sáclair to fight his way through.

There was a great measure of shame in using the device attached to her computer interface. It was one of the devices she'd invented from the study of xenotech, one of the devices she'd been exiled for having invented. It allowed her to interface with the Machine Spirit against it's will without having the proper genetic verifiers normally necessary.

Even with the additional force fields and servitors she'd placed between the Lionhearts and herself it was only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed. And time was greatly against Kerrigan. Worse yet, her efforts to activate the ship's systems were impeded by the mischievous nature of the machine spirit.

"Blasted riddles. Why must the machine spirit of the Endless Bounty constantly indulge in these infuriating games?" Spat the Magos with disdain as she tossed another maze of code between herself and Sáclair, blocking him from retaking the warp engines. She was one answer away from rescuing the Inquisitor, Abbas, and anyone else on the station with a sub-dermal comm.-bead but for reasons understood only by the Omnissiah yet another of the ship's self indulgent games.

Abbas had provided her with all the riddles he knew, but it seemed that his boast of knowing "every riddle" the ship could think up was grossly misinformed. Her brow furrowed at the infuriating little joke made by the ship's machine spirit. Binary titters bounced in the back of her interface, the damned spirit was laughing at her in joyous mischief.

- ++ Input code ++ -

Q5A6Q3 A1Z6A2Q2Q3Q4 Q8A2 A1Q5 Q6Q9Q7Q4 A4Q8Z6AGQ3Q4Q5Q8Q10A2

But for the life of her she couldn't even begin to guess what the answer was. She'd run the cipher past every word she knew in every language she could think of, including binary, but it continued to mean absolutely nothing.

Sáclair's mind lashed out at Kerrigan, nearly making it through her maze. Kerrigan retreated into another section of the ship, briefly allowing him to retake navigation. She could leech power away from it into the sensor arrays, neutering his ability to activate the warp drives. Sáclair was stronger than she could ever hope to be in the virtual landscape of the ship but his knowledge of the workings of the great machine mind was minimal. Hopefully that advantage would be enough.

Her mind weaved through vast stacks of data piled haphazardly, new information about the rapidly moving sensor contacts arriving in rapid succession. Kerrigan dodged the stacks, trying to avoid the overwhelming amounts of information. If she were caught by a stack of data her memory engrams would be temporary paralyzed as they struggled to process information intended for an intelligence many magnitudes that of the Magos. Time lost she could ill afford.

Sáclair had no such impediment. The Leonine presence of Sáclair prowled the sensor array, arriving with alarming speed. Her maze hadn't slowed him as greatly as she'd hoped. The combined processing power of the ancient captains in Sáclair's mind was impressive. He stalker her through the jungle of data, wading through readouts with impunity. Impossible though it was, she could almost taste his disgust and disappointment.

Time seemed to slow as the combined efforts of the _Endless Bounty_ and Sáclair were turned against her. She was an invader, an usurper, an unworthy flea, and they were no longer willing to suffer her presence. Kerrigan struggled to compress her presence and sneak into another system and winced in pain as the data stream she'd tried to enter cut off abruptly, bursting the small pocket of her avatar she'd probed in the direction of life support. Pain echoed through the virtual world, freezing her in place with a packet of data.

The combined minds took the opportunity to eject her from the ships systems, forcing her violently back to the real world. Kerrigan swore furiously as she detached herself from the ship's data ports, fearful that the _Endless Bounty_ might well enter her own mind. She deactivated her eyes, unable to comprehend both the tactical data from the ships sensors and the vision from her own eyes at the same time.

By the Omnissiah xenos picked now to attack the bounty? It was as though the universe were conspiring against her. This changed the politics greatly; there would be no way for her to save her people even if she managed to get the Inquisitor back onboard.

Daul well may shoot her himself for endangering the ship.

"Mistress," An extremely nervous auto-savant approached her, waddling forwards on a set of inverted agumentic legs. His scrolls and quills clicked with each tentative step, "Mistress they've cut through all but the last two bulkheads... it will only be a matter of minutes before they've breached those as well... there are more than a hundred of them mistress..."

"Then you'll have to hold them off when they get through then won't you," Xerax barked in frustrated fury, his words filled with more frustration than conviction. The Lionhearts were more than a match for the handful of Skitarii and combat servitors in her retinue, even with the aid of her cyber cherubs. Not for the first time that day she regretted sending her own private bodyguard to fight with Inquisitor Hilder instead of allowing the Lionhearts to return to the station. The Ogryn servitors would be greatly appreciated at the moment.

It had been a foolish decision, but she hadn't been able to stand the thought of Danzig or Sergei dying along with Hilder. She had so few allies left in the universe; she could not afford to lose those few she had left. To hell with duty to hell with honor. She just wanted to stop watching people she cared about dying. Iino... Ominissiah but she missed the humorless berk.

Even the humblest of bondsmen were armed with lasrifles and small scale laser weaponry, staring at the door in trepidation. She'd brought them all with her in anticipation that Sáclair might retaliate against her. A nervous gaggle of apprentices busied themselves with monitoring the transfer of energy, pretending that they were not terrified.

They would follow her into the jaws of death; they would follow her to the end.

Danzig would end them all. Of that she had no doubt. He was expedient in following Sáclair's orders and devoted to his craft.

And it would be the bitter end. Hilder would die, Abbas would die, and all her retainers would die. All in the name of her own wounded pride. By the cog, how had this happened?

"No," Kerrigan whispered to herself, "No, enough have died..." She would not solve the riddle before the bulkheads gave way. Once that happened all that awaited her was dishonor and death, for her those who served her. That would not do.

The Magos' mechandrites danced around the interface, re-routing power and activating dormant systems, giving the slumbering beast teeth and claws. Distant roars greeted her ears, heralding the fruits of her labors. The Machine Spirit did so without protest, eager to be whole again.

It was done.

Kerrigan walked away from the controls, over the obsidian slab of the teleporter, past the barricades erected by her loyal retainers, and up to the closed bulkhead. It was an impressive block of adamantium, gilded and covered with stories of the saints and wards of safety and protection. Her servants called out to her in confusion.

"Mistress?"

"Where are you going?"

"Come back Mistress!"

She ignored them, she knew what had to be done, the only think that could be done. She pressed her hand to the control plate to the bulkhead, and opened the doors. The bulkheads gave way and an astonished Hamman stared at her from ten meters up the corridor where he was aiding three men in loading a melta charge into a heavy weapon. He stared at her in horror, realizing that if she wanted him dead she could shoot him at any second.

She looked into his eyes ignoring the melta charge in his hands, sighed, and spoke the words that would save the lives of her retainers, "I surrender."

* * *

There were days where Michael really hated his job. This was probably going to top his "worst day ever" rankings for eternity. Honestly, when you vented something out to the void of space, the least it could do is get slowed down by the vacuum. The Imperials had wisely taken the hint, gotten on their transport, and got the heck off his station.

Now that he no longer had the Inquisitor to deal with he was unsure what to do with Kosh. The subtle nuanced meaning of sucking the air out of a room seemed to have been lost on Ambassador Kosh. It mostly seemed to have made the Vorlon madder, if such a thing was possible.

Security resealed the outer doors to the cargo bay and put the doors between the cargo bay and the customs offices on lock down in the hopes of containing him. As it transpired, trying to keep a Vorlon somewhere he doesn't wasn't an easy task. Even with additional safeties in place Kosh overrode the computer securities on the door as easily as turning a key, gliding out with indomitable intent.

The alien look of the Vorlon encounter suit was exaggerated by the numerous cuts, dents, rents, and tears in the material. Kosh's eye opened and closed, clicking with rage. What security had been in place to stop the Ambassador from escaping froze in horror at a single word. a simple threatening command.

"Don't"

His officers backed down, terrified of the Vorlon. Garibaldi couldn't blame them for being scared, he was too. Unfortunately he didn't have the luxury of backing down, "Ambassador Kosh you are under arrest for murder and attempted murder. You are now persona non grata on this station, I will escort you to a cell where you will await deportation."

"Incorrect," The Vorlon ignored Garibaldi, gliding past him and down the corridor.

Michael ran after him, weapon raised, keeping pace with the Vorlon, "You killed people, you tried to kill me, you're making a mockery of everything that Babylon 5 stands for. And I don't much like it."

The Vorlon ignored him and continued to glide forwards.

"You know this means war?" The words sounded silly, even to Michael. The Vorlons were more than capable of stopping the Earth Alliance. Kosh did not deign to answer, "Of course you do... Vorlons know best don't they?"

He put himself in front of the Vorlon, "What gives you the right?"

"They consorted with the abyss," The Vorlon glared, "Darkness corrupts all."

"And were my security officers 'corrupt' or were they just in your way," Garibaldi pointed his pistol at the Vorlon's eye, "I can't stop you today. We both know that. But I won't let you kill anyone."

The Vorlon stared at him in silence; it's twitching optic's irritated buzz exacerbating the Ambassador's overwhelming nature. Motes of light shone from the gouges in the encounter suit, flickering in brilliant patterns across the crystaline blood dripping from the Vorlon's many wounds. Silence and more silence.

"Uh... this is the part where you threaten me or something..." Michael cleared his throat and waved his hand in front of the Vorlon. Kosh continued to examine him. Was it Kosh's wounds catching up to him? No, that wasn't it. Or at least it wasn't the whole story.

The Vorlon had been single mindlessly violent in pursuit of the Inquisitor, but only in pursuit of the Inquisitor. His attacks on anything else had been purely co-incidental. It seemed... unsure... as though it were hesitant to harm him.

As though he were ashamed of what he'd done.

"Look... Ambassador I can't let you keep doing what you're doing," Michael held his hands up, "I have to detain you... stop you."

"Unfortunate," the gun shot out of his hand, propelled by an unseen force as Kosh lifted Garibaldi out of his way with a slight effort of psychic energy. Garibaldi struggled against the Vorlon's telekinesis as he floated behind the Vorlon.

Security moved to stop him but a wave of blue energy burst from the Vorlon, undeniable psychic suggestion forcing the two dozen armed and armored officers into blissful sleep. They slumped to the floor, dreamy looks of comfort on their faces.

Michael kicked his legs, trying to free himself from the power binding him, but his body had ceased responding to his commands. He was aware of his body only vaguely, as though in a dream, watching through his eyes and speaking through his limps but otherwise an observer.

Michael focused his will on his right hand, grinding his teeth audibly in his effort to draw his sidearm. The PPG was tantilizingly close, just beneath paralyzed fingers. He could feel the shape of it, the weight of it, as he floated behind Kosh down a familiar set of corridors in Blue sector.

The Vorlon was heading for CnC, heading for the Captain.

And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

* * *

Vir hadn't realized that he'd fallen asleep till the kick of the _Endless Bounty_'s artificial gravity yanked him down into his seat jarring him back into the land of the living. His body, exhausted from the day's exertions, protested the lack of sleep agonizingly but there was nothing for it but to wake up and stare out the window.

They'd landed in a wide cargo bay, sweeping gothic columns and elaborate filigree marking it as the inside of an Imperial ship. Judging by the frenzied movements of the ship's deck crew, a ship in the throes of battle.

"Maker's breath," he swore angrily as he watched the filthy peasants toil around battle damaged snub fighters and bombers, "When will this day end."

"We're not through yet," chuckled the delirious Inquisitor, "Not by a long shot." The man was in a horrible state; his face was sallow and purplish where the flesh was puckering into bruised welts. His right eye, swollen shut from an obviously infected cut above his eye, oozed pus that dripped down across his cheek staining the thick coat he wore over his shattered armor.

Vira'capac's pointed command of, "Don't move man thing," was wholly unnecessary. Inquisitor Hilder was obviously not capable of walking under his own power. The concussed man wobbled drunkenly on his feet between the supporting arms of the two of them, muttering curses in his native tongue.

Tuul slung Cairn over a shoulder in an ungraceful fireman's carry and punched a button on the rear of the spacecraft, popping the hatch. The human psychics tried to follow the disembarking pilots but the tech priest refused, telling them to stay in the craft for safety reasons. They didn't want to be mistaken for stowaways or saboteurs after all. He sealed them into the ship before striding out into the utter chaos of the launch bay with obvious purpose, clearly aware of where he was going.

It was a quality Vir did not share.

Vir followed the Kroot, struggling to keep up as the alien waded through the crewmen without tripping over the two excited mastiffs. It wasn't a difficult task; the Imperial citizens avoided the three of them by at least three paces at all times. The crewmen went so far as to jump out of the way rather than risk slowing them down.

They were utterly, visibly, and unashamedly terrified of the man between them, even now. There was something in their eyes when they looked at the Inquisitor that he recognized, a low hollow desperation. It was the look slaves reserved for their master, near insulting in their practiced submission. He hated being looked at that way. It made him feel... unclean.

The crowd of crewmen gave way to an obvious triage. White smocked doctors toiled over the dying and the dead, aided by a multitude of hovering skulls armed with surgical tools. One of the doctors finished his final stitch and looked up at the Inquisitor, his expression of concentrated professionalism turning to genuine astonishment. His mouth curved into a disbelieving smile as he waved to a recently vacated cot, "Curabitur odio ver der andere Mann."

"Ille a poco zanyatyi," responded the Inquisitor from where Vira'capac laid him on the cot, "Quod coa morte me."

The doctor shook his head dismissively and injected something into the base of the Inquisitor's neck that knocked him unconscious in moments. As a dozen skulls descended upon the Inquisitor, cutting the clothing from his body, Vira'capac grabbed Vir by the shoulder and frog marched him from the makeshift surgery. Vir kept up a brisk hopping pace to match the lanky strides of the Kroot.

The hunter's talons pressed uncomfortably into sore muscles through the soft velvet of his jacket, guiding him through the cavernous passages of the _Endless Bounty_ with practiced ease. Confused crewmen gasped in terror at the sight of them, ducking back the way they came or hurrying past them with conscious effort not to make eye contact. Three turns and two passages worth of confused encounters later they reached the Kroot's destination, a small vegetable garden of tubers and luminescent fungi hanging from the ceiling built around a truly gaudy fountain in the shape of some predatory cat.

The Kroot let go and sat cross legged on the ground in front of the fountain facing a stone bench, waving idly with his left hand to the open seat. Vir sat on the cool stone, glad to be off his legs, "What was that about?"

"Rushing from healer or cowards hiding," trilled the Kroot. Unnerving slitted eyes regarded Vir with predatory acumen, analyzing his every motion. They seemed to bore into his very thoughts, "Or something else?"

"All of them I suppose," Vir hardly knew where to start, "Start with whatever is most pressing."

"Wise," The Kroot pulled an obsidian pendant from his pouch and held it out to Vir. An I-shaped length of jet black stone with an ivory skull set in the middle of it twirled in the air as the Kroot rubbed the length of chain it hung from between his fingers, flashing glints of red light whenever the ruby eyes of the skull reflected off the light cast by luminescent moss, "We start with safety."

Vir winced as Vira'capac pressed the pendant against his thing and pressed on the right eye. A needle shot out of the icon and into his leg with lightning speed. He barely had time to yelp in astonishment before the needle retracted back into the obsidian case, "Watch it!"

"Done," Vira'capac squeezed the idol a second time, causing its eyes to flash before handing it to Vir, "Now safety is ensured."

Vir massaged his thigh in confusion, wincing as the garden shook with the impact of incoming fire. Hunks of luminescent moss shook from the ceiling, "What part of safety required injecting me with... whatever that was?"

"The Inquisitor granted the brood of Vira'capac special dispensation. Icons to indicate Kroot servants of Inquisition. Protection," the edge of his beak clicked in memory, "Blood in stone. Once entered cannot be changed. Cannot be altered. Safe."

"One use," Vir tucked the stone into a breast pocket, "But don't your brothers needed them?"

"Dead... long dead," the Kroot said in a far away croon, "Not all brothers used icons, silly uncomfortable things. Did not comprehend. Vira'capac kept the unused. Only one left. Authority Vira'capac's to use them. I use on you."

"I'm honored," Vir rubbed his hands together, "But I still don't understand exactly what I am being protected from."

"Osma for start," Vira'capac pointed behind Vir with one talon, drawing Vir's attention to a pair of crimson suited security officers holding unpleasant looking weapons pointed in their direction. Vira'capac remained on his knees and raised his hands behind his head as the large bearded man pushed him to the ground with a hobnailed boot, binding his hands and feet with thick iron manacles.

Vir stood up, raising his hands in a placating gesture to the bearded man and tired to say, "Peace man, he is your ally. What is wrong with you," but only got as "what" before the man smashed the butt of his gun into Vir's nose, knocking him out for the second time that day.

* * *

The intervention of the Narn and Centauri ships was a welcome surprise. It was against Imperial military doctrine to accept xenos aide but then so was dying. He ordered his forces to protect his xenos allies as best they could. Loyalty should be rewarded, no matter displayed loyalty. These xenos believed they had a moral obligation to protect him and his.

It was hard not to feel camaraderie for those dying to protect you. A half dozen gutted warships; most of them from the fleet who'd tried to attack him littered the space around the Babylon station. The least he could do was return the favor.

"Mr. Andrews I need better accuracy on those ships," Sáclair maneuvered the ship to where he expected the second ship to be, firing the dorsal lance batteries in staccato bursts, "Solutions?"

"Sir, I'm not a miracle worker," Mr. Andrews eyes narrowed, clearly at the edge of his patience, "Nothing I can rig up will be better than Kerrigan's sensor package." He clamped his mouth shut, intimately aware of the taboo of speaking a mutineer's name. Many of the crew believed that speaking the name of a mutineer gave part of yourself to treason, that betrayal did not even deserve memory.

"Then start praying," Sáclair disconnected the communiqué in disgust. He hated how much he truly did need the Magos. Her understanding of the sophisticated modifications she'd done to the ship's systems was crucial if he intended to keep them at the peak efficiency that she'd upgraded them to. The skills of his own Enginseers were substantially more limited now that he no longer had Iino at his disposal.

Bioships prowled the void, predatory and menacing. A subtle edge of panic twinged through the machine spirit of the great ship, an overwhelming inevitability that prey feels when faced by a predator and robbed of both fight and flight. The _Endless Bounty_ was loosing the fight against these damnable ships, they just refused to die.

He needed a miracle.

"Speak of the devil," Muttered Sáclair as the hailing identification number of Colonel Danzig flashed upon his hololith. He pressed one of the jewels encrusted into his throne, clicking an activation rune connecting the incoming signal, "I presume that my functioning gun batteries mean that you've been successful?"

"Yes sir," Danzig replied in a pleased voice, "Casualties have been minimal with only three fatalities prior to Kerrigan's surrender. I have accepted the terms of her total surrender on your behalf."

"Terms," Sáclair growled, "I offered no conditional surrender."

"My apologies milord," Danzig cleared his throat, "But they have offered their complete surrender in exchange for the lives of those in Kerrigan's service."

"But not Kerrigan," Sáclair grunted. It was in keeping with the arrogance she'd demonstrated so far to pull a stunt like this and expect no consequences.

"No sir," Danzig hesitated, "The Magos offered herself for their continued service to your ship and a promise not to punish them for her crimes."

"Very well," the servants of Kerrigan would do almost as well as the Magos herself for what he needed. In the light of treason "almost" would have to be enough, "You've done well."

"Sir," Danzig cleared his throat, "What do I do about the Magos."

"I would have thought that was obvious," Sáclair snarled as a knife sharp burst of pain erupted in his shoulders where dart fighters strafed the _Endless Bounty_. He could feel the wake of the deadly fighters strafing the _Endless Bounty_ from behind. Dearing attacks piercing the ship's void shields and scoring the hull. He screamed in agony as an attack burst the bulkhead of aft sector 376 venting it to space, "Dispose of her and get her people back repairing my bleeding ship."

"How?"

"Use your imagination," Sáclair snarled, "I hazard you can think of a punishment to fit the crime."

"Of course sir," replied the Lionheart as he disconnected the transmission, "At once sir."

Sáclair turned his attention back to pressing matters. It was time to do a proper bit of violence, "Lets show them how it's done old girl." machine responded to his every caress, gyrating and twisting in ecstatic ease through the debris of Epsilon III, hungry for revenge.

He could feel the smaller ships of the combined fleet supporting him shifting and moving around him like a school of fish, agile little fighters dancing around them in swirling pirouettes of destruction. The titanic bounty flipped hard to port, reveling in the rush of having regained control of his ship's weapons.

The Endless Bounty opened fire, sending torpedoes careening across the void of space towards the bio ship fleet. Fired blind the torpedoes were at the mercy of the enemy ships' protective countermeasures but even the most sophisticated of defense systems couldn't prevent the volume of fire launched from the _Endless Bounty_ from connecting with something as large as the flagship bioship.

The salvo connected with the mottled green and yellow hide of the ship in a burst of heat and ichor, tearing out hunks of organic armor and fluids. It's odd purple innards seeped forwards into the injured body of the great beast, knitting its wounds shut only to burst as a second salvo hit the open wounds.

"Sir we're receiving distress calls from damaged ally fighters. I don't know if the rescue vehicles for our allies will reach them in time," Donat said in confusion, his need to reward loyalty warring with his distaste for xenos, "Shall I order our rescue ships to render aid?"

"Yes," Sáclair said without thinking, intimately aware of the damaged Imperial fighters being ferried back to the relative safety of Babylon Five by Alliance Fighters, "But keep them in isolation. We can give any that survive back to their ships later. The Emperor will forgive a moment's kindness."

The Narn darts and Centauri half moon ships were putting themselves in harms way for him, the xenos risking their lives to fight an enemy that they clearly unequipped to fight. It was cardinal heresy to feel that there were xenos worthy of trust, but even the primarchs spoke of xenos worthy of respect. One did not have to love a wolf to appreciate protection from a bear.

Their strategies were wildly different, the Centauri attacked with practiced precision, each step of an attack leading to a planned step beyond. The Narn fought irrationally, individual fighters tossing themselves at the enemy and pulling away without any visible strategies to them, though still somehow managing to operate as a cohesive unit. Neither of the xenos race's fighters were as maneuverable as the Alliance fighters, who seemed to dance through the sky.

The death screams of a Centauri warship echoed from the lips of his astropathic servitor, unintentionally broadcast by the psychic impression of their onboard telepath. The scimitar like Vorchan disappeared from his senses, all hands lost. A wing of the darts shot through the wreckage to conceal their advance. Scourging another Centauri ship before a fighter wing of Frazi class fighters intercepted them, the darts departed in a rush.

The main cannon of the enemy flagship fired, shattering the thin skin of warp energy protecting the _Endless Bounty_. Sáclair spun the ship upside down, forcing the beam to collide with the heavily armored underbelly of the Bounty instead of crippling the open gun ports. He winced at the damage report, fires on the lower levels near the foredecks.

"Just five more minutes for the warp engines to warm up girl," Sáclair whispered encouragingly to the ship's machine spirit, "Just hang on for five more minutes."

* * *

Kerrigan hadn't immediately recognized the room as an incinerator when she'd been led to it. Danzig's insistence that Xerran and five of her attendants and five servitors accompany her lulled her into the assumption that Sáclair made the decision to be merciful. A life of captivity wouldn't be hundreds of servitors and attendants any more, but it was better than nothing.

In her gratitude she hadn't even protested that she and her attendants should be blindfolded on their way to the brig as a show of what happens to those who disobey Sáclair. It had been a poor choice.

When they reached their destination it had been Xerran to remove his blindfold first, Xerran to first realize their fate, Xerran who'd been the first to react, Xerran who'd been the first to die. He lashed out at their captors, forcing himself back through the door and trying to escape. A shot to the chest from a plasma rifle vaporized his chest and arms, killing him in seconds.

The thick door to the incinerator slammed shut with a final spinning click as the lock fit into place.

"You son of a bitch," Kerrigan screamed, her voice carried by an internal transmitter onto the ship's communication network, "I surrendered! I surrendered!"

Her attendants, mostly servants who'd been with her for the better part of the past five decades dropped their bags and rushed the door beating on it with their fists as the floor rumbled with the sounds of rumbling machinery. They scrambled at it like drowning rats as a thick stone slab lowered from the ceiling to block the door from the oppressive heat of the plasma discharge.

The stone walls were scorched and covered in little rivulets where the extreme heat pitted it, sold stone for 360 degrees. There were no computer inputs, no consuls, no doors to manipulate, no switches, and no hope.

A series of vents opened in the ceiling, and the scent of burning sulfur filled the chamber. The ashes of recent cremations puffed up in little clouds around her feet as she slumped down on her knees, her arms dropping to the ground in defeat, and sobbed, "Danzig let my people go! You promised me that all my attendants would be in service would be allowed to live."

She'd picked the five of them because they meant the most to her. They were the ones who were closest to her, servants who were as much family as attendants. She'd purchased Bizack when he was a child of five and raised him to be her secretary, personally overseeing the insertion of his memory engrams and alterations.

Gerra and Gertrude were maids tasked with preparing food and dresses, a mere formality for her own daily life but a necessity in dealing with nobles and the like. Gossipy, bubbly, and everything she wasn't they two of them served as vicarious outlets for her own unrealized femininity.

Regulus was an aging codger of a man but one couldn't hope for a better auto-savant. And the boy Galen, her most recent acquisition, showed great promise but even greater spirit. She kept him as much for his precocious nature as his proficiency at tidying her quarters.

They were killing her, and forcing her to watch those she loved die.

Forcing her to watch.

Heat haze came off the floor, blurring the five servitor constructs standing in the center of the room oblivious to the danger. She stared at them, searching for something she could get them to do, but nothing came to mind. These were logistical servitors, equipped for conducting minor repairs and manual labor, not cutting through bulkheads or blasting stone.

Smoke filled the room, acrid sulfuric stuff that sucked out the air and smelled of rotten eggs. Kerrigan rushed to help the aging Regulus and young Galen to put on their re-breathers, watching with horror as they suffocated while the oxygen left the room. Regulus took little effort but Galen was too young to understand what was going on, he wriggled like an eel crying out in pain. He was just too scared to co-operate as she yanked the mask over his face.

Gerra grabbed Gertrude and hugged her, closely pressing her forehead against the other woman's. The intimate gesture was only slightly hampered by the pressure mask as the lovers prepared to die in each other's arms whispering the words of the prayer of the eternal way, confirming Kerrigan's long held suspicions about them.

Bizak required no assistance but then again Bizak never did seem to be surprised by anything. She suspected that she might have done permanent damage to the part of his body that produced adrenaline when she inserted the brain augmentation that eliminated his need to sleep.

"Dazig, I beg your forgiveness," Kerrigan hugged the little boy to her, "Please!"

Flames burst from the outer ring, forcing them to the center of the room and scorching the floor. Superheated bursts of air kicked up the corpse dust on the ground, covering them all in a thin layer of grey. Kerrigan wiped the dust from her optics feverishly as she retreated to the center.

Another ring of fire shot down, blue flames sucking more and more oxygen from the room and forcing the rebreathers to work harder and harder to filter what little air remained. Kerrigan pulled a knife from her belt and punctured the necks of the servitors, severing their spines and killing them. There was no need to waste what little oxygen they had left on servitors.

Another ring of fire and Kerrigan removed her robe to wrap the boy in. It would give him some small measure of protection from the heat on his bare arms and legs. Regulus passed out, though she was at a loss to say if it was because of fear or lack of oxygen. His chest continued to rise and fall.

Another ring of fire and Kerrigan felt her skin blistering from the heat. Her servants screamed as their own skin pocked and cracked under the stress, she reached to give Bizak a comforting grip on his shoulder and flinched when he screamed and recoiled from her hand. Her red hot agumentics seared a print on his flesh, even through his shirt.

Another ring of fire and Kerrigan realized it would soon be over. The next ring would kill them with ambient heat alone, and three more rings would dissolve them into more corpse dust. She said the prayer of the Ominissiah's cogitation and waited for the end to come.

And waited.

And waited.

With a sudden whoosh of closing vents the fire went away, leaving the room bathed in darkness. The burned and miserable servants sobbed from the floor, moaning and too hurt to even stand. Kerrigan lifted the boy's swaddling, taking care not to touch the boy with her scalding limbs and was gratified to find him only superficially burned.

A voice echoed in her head, words like ice. Danzig replied, "The price of mutiny is death, but Abbas is alive because of your actions. He is also trapped because of your actions. A life for a life you will be marooned, not executed." It was as much mercy as Danzig was likely to summon in his heart for someone who'd sent one of his charges into the path of a demon.

Tears stung Kerrigan's eyes as she whispered hateful words of thanks to Danzig, honest in their brevity.

The ceiling parted and the boxy irregular form of a garbage scow lowered into the room. The sort of scow used for transporting a load of corpse dust to the hydroponics wings. Unarmed but heavily armored it was a slow plodding pathetic excuse for the ship, but it beat the empty night of space by lightyears.

Kerrigan loaded her followers and what was left of the servitors into the cab of the scow. She winced at every cry of pain from her cracked and bleeding attendants, but it was pain or death. Give the two pain wins every time. There was barely space for the five of them, and the pressure door's slow whistling seal indicated an ominously weak barrier.

Barely over the edge to being considered space-worthy, it was an ideal vessel for marooning.

Red lights flashed brightly from recessed points in the walls, indicating a wide set of double doors. A wide section of wall lifted, opening out into the vacuum of space. The blackness sucked the scow out into the void, tossing them into the raging battle.

* * *

The security officers at the doors of CnC collapsed to the floor, unconscious before the door swung ajar revealing a creature in mottled metallic green armor. Kosh rolled into the room like the thunder of a distant storm, an audible perception of the distant chaos. Lt. Corwin reached for his sidearm but stopped at a look from John, if possible this would not be resolved with weapons.

He couldn't hope to win a battle of straight up power. Luckily he'd never been one for fighting fair, or predictably.

"Ambassador Kosh," John kept his anger in check, though it stewed in the back of his mind, "I'm hoping you're here with one heck of a story explaining yourself."

"The third must not be allowed," Kosh growled by way of explanation, "The third is evil."

"You see I'm a bit hazy on exactly what the 'third' even is," John held up a finger, "Now I can guess that it probably has something to do with the so called 'demon' the Inquisitor fought, what he called the warp."

"Forbidden," the Vorlon intoned ominously, sparing a significant glance at Delenn. The Minbari shrank back from his gaze, trying to make herself smaller where she sat in ashamed silence. Whatever hold he'd suspected the Vorlon Empire held on Minbari affairs was apparently an under estimation.

"Dangerous enough to kill for?" Already weary, John rubbed the back of his neck to rub out some of the stiffness. His spine popped satisfyingly and he sighed sadly, "Dangerous enough to die for?"

"Yes."

"Not dangerous enough to kill the demon though," The Vorlon shifted slightly, narrowing it's optic. Good, John hadn't made the wrong assumption, "You waited for someone else to fight the demon before you risked it. There was something about it that was dangerous too you, too dangerous to risk approaching beforehand."

The Vorlon continued its silent observation. John smiled, "Not just the demon though, you've been avoiding the Imperial Ambassador entirely. It hadn't occurred to me to think of it as anything other than your normal reclusively but you've avoided even the pretense of diplomacy with the Imperials. You waited for the one to weaken the other, then pounced."

"Assumption is more dangerous than ignorance," the Vorlon's shoulders slumped in disappointment. The ethereal voice of the Vorlon sounded more like a disappointed teacher than an attacker, "You know little."

"Your forces will withdraw immediately," John cut in over the Vorlon's lecture, "If they do not I will be forced to take drastic action."

"The fangless will bite," Kosh intoned in a voice of regret, "And die...yes."

"Or they will enlist the help of a hound with a stronger bite," spoke a disembodied voice. A shimmering figure appeared in the center of the room, a portly Minbari with a well manicured bone crest and a wide grin, "One does tend to ask one's neighbors for favors on occasion."

The man clapped his hands together and bowed to Delenn, "Especially old friends."

"Draal," Delenn smiled fondly, "It is good to see you. You look well."

"I feel well, the machine has restored me to my former vigor of youth. I feel like a man of thirty," He slapped his generous belly contentedly, still reminiscent of the aging professor he'd once been, "And you would be Captain Sheridan. I've been watching you and I've come to decide I like you."

"Thank you," John held out his hand in greeting before remembering that Draal was a hologram rather than a physical person. He pulled back his hand, clapping nervously.

Draal quirked his eyebrow in amusement, "The gesture is appreciated."

"Too early for your role," Kosh narrowed his eye in confusion, "It is not time."

"And your place is not here and now," Draal replied, "We must all play our new roles. The caretaker plays his part."

Beneath the surface of the planet was a massive network of computers and devices of alien origin and unknown purpose known only as "The Great Machine." At the center of the machine, near where the machine drew power from the planet's core, was the so called heart of the machine where the caretaker controlled it.

Draal had taken over as caretaker when the previous caretaker's age exceeded the abilities of the machine's life extension protocols, giving him control of the machine and it's extensive planetary defensive weapons. Weapons that, judging by Draal's grin, were easily a match for the Vorlon fleet.

"It is forbidden," Kosh hissed.

"No Ambassador," Draal cut his hand through the air dismissively, pointing his fingers to the view screen, "Your vendetta against the Imperials is not stipulated within the terms of our pact."

"I must persecute crimes of the third," The Vorlon's voice was sad, reluctant, "It must not become what it was."

"You would know that best, wouldn't you," Kosh bristled at the apparent insult, "Withdraw your forces Vorlon."

"No."

"Ambassador Kosh this is the domain of the great machine, not the Vorlon Empire. You may have taken it in the last Ygnir war but it is its own domain," Draal's eyes narrowed, "And the Machine does not wish to allow this trespass."

"The machine serves the circle."

"The machine obey's itself and its caretaker, nothing more, nothing less," A mischievous glint flashed in Draal's eyes, "And I find myself disliking your arrogant bullying of those weaker than yourself."

And then the sensor grid lit up like never before.

* * *

The resounding alarm in Sáclair's ears as warning of an incoming assault from Epsilon III. A beam of light large enough to engulf the _Endless Bounty_ shot from the depths of the planet. Sáclair's ears rang with ambient tinnitus as his mind tried to comprehend weapon that had just been fired.

Space rippled in a long wave of distortion the largest enemy battle cruiser disappeared. Not exploded, not destroyed, simply gone, vanished as though it had never been. A wash of radioactive micro-debris blossomed from where the ship had been. A great warship turned to dust. Whatever that weapon was it could have crushed the _Endless Bounty_ like an insect.

Sheridan's boast of destroying the_ Endless Bounty_ if necessary had more merit to it than he'd given it credit. Just getting caught in the wake of that weapon was terrifying. The first shot caused system damage just by being near its wake.

"Sir we've received a report from Medicus Nor," A nervous serving boy approached him with a handwritten note, "The Inquisitor made it back to the ship."

"He did?" Sáclair accepted the note with hesitant fingers, as though touching the paper would make the message fake. Vertigo struck him as he made the mistake of trying to manipulate the ship at the opposite motion from his own body. Dizzy eyes roved the short note in a doctor's messy scrawl, "How? When?"

The Inquisitor managed to make it back, though an exactly headcount still needed to be done. The demon was dealt with. "Throne of Terra," Sáclair blinked at the note in shock, "We could leave at any time."

"We should do that then,"Navigator Illrich's snuff box dropped from his hand with a clatter, the long digits of his hands quaking with unease, "Quite fast!"

The idea sounded particularly appealing as the remaining bio-ships redoubled their efforts, doing their best to put the combined fleet between themselves and the combined fleet. Sáclair issued the recall order for their fighters and started the preflight check for entering the warp, checking that they Hexegrammic wards and airlocks were in place.

Donat, ever practical, turned to an Ensign, "Send a message to the fleet to fall back to the station, we don't want any of their ships getting caught in the rift."

Sáclair shuddered at the thought, sending a ship into the warp without wards was a fate he wouldn't wish upon his worst foe. Those onboard would be wholly at the mercy of whatever entities took notice of a ship full of moral souls and manflesh. No one survived that, even if they lived. Demons could do worse things to a man than kill him.

He turned his ship in the opposite direction of the combined fleet's path of retreat, all too aware that he was isolating himself from his allies. The risk that a ship might be damaged and unaware of the danger was too great. Even xenos deserved some consideration.

Predictably when the _Endless Bounty_ headed in one direction and the combined fleet in another the Vorlon ships chose to follow the_ Endless Bounty_. Sáclair struggled to reach the clarity of purpose necessary for breaking the veil between worlds while resisting the sense of vertigo that came with rapid course corrections.

No longer harried by the_ Endless Bounty'_s fighters, the enemy fighters followed her mercilessly. Dartships swarmed her hull, punching holes in the armor and causing small fires in the outer decks. Sáclair's flesh burned as though it were being stabbed with a thousand daggers, the sensation of phantom punctures omnipresent.

"We've calculated the initial window," Hissed Illirch. His milky white center eye glowed with the third sight, the Navigator's natural talents coming into play, "Opening in three, two, one, mark."

A circle of space ripped inward, a swirling purple and black Maelstrom of malice forcing its way into the real world. Malevolent and eager, the warp energies crackled against the matter of the real world guiding the _Endless Bounty_'s path. Unreality and physics combated violently, lighting shooting out in screaming arcs for miles in every direction.

The dart ships careened away from the bounty in terror, struggling to avoid the rift. An unfortunate handful plunged into the rift, unable to correct their course. Tendrils of the wormhole eagerly reached out, grabbing them and dragging them to Throne knows where.

Sáclair dove into the rift, past the tendrils of warp energy. They reached out for the ship, pawing over the ships wards without success. He shot past them and collapsed the entrance, sealing it with an additional rune. The binding would only last for minutes, but that could be hours or days in the real world.

"By the throne," Sáclair snarled, "Disgraced in battle by hertic forces twice."

With the Emperor as his witness Faust would not get the better of him a third time.

* * *

This was not part of prophecy, not part of the plan. She'd hoped Draal could reason with Kosh, do something to slow the Vorlon ships or protect the Imperial ship. But attacking the Vorlons? It hadn't ever occurred to her. Captain Sheridan was as taken aback by Draals violent attack as she was, his eye's near bulging with confusion.

The crucial elements of the future coming to fruition required that the Great Machine, the Vorlons, the Humans, and Minbari work in concert. It was not simply a product of what could happen, it was a function of what must happen.

Yet for all her assurances of the inevitability of the future she was stuck in the impossible morass of the present. Captain Sheridan and Draal stood in front of Kosh in open defiance.

"Why," Kosh's voice was not angry, only confused. He examined at Draal as one might examine a horse that'd just kicked his groom and crippled him, "Why?"

"The pattern has changed, and new possibilities arise," Draal responded immediately.

"And the circle?"

"It abides," Draal spoke in Vorlon riddles, intentionally keeping the humans in ignorance. Delenn knew enough to realize that the circle was the Vorlon plan for combating the Shadows, though the specifics of it were lost on her. Obedience did not require understanding.

"Then we are finished," Kosh let go of Mr. Garibaldi, dropping the man to the floor. The Vorlon turned and left the room, ignoring Garibaldi's furious string of expletives. Captain Sheridan helped the man to his feet, staring at the door in disgust.

"Finished? Does he really expect to just walk away after everything he's done?" the Captain tapped his communicator twice to issue an arrest order then froze as though someone had slapped him, "Of course he does. He has diplomatic immunity, and even if he didn't what are we supposed to do to him? We can't even declare him without persona non grata without a unanimous vote of the Babylon 5 advisory council." That such a vote was near impossible went without saying.

Draal shrugged, "Very little I suspect. And there is less I can do. My treaty with the Vorlons prevents interference in their guiding of the younger races."

"That's it? They kill hundreds and it goes under the category of 'it happens sometimes," Garibaldi croaked hoarsely, "Just whoops and move on? Like hell."

"I was not caretaker at the time the deal was forged," the hologram flickered slightly, "I would not have agreed to an eternal contract if I had been. But it is what it is. And I am what I am." He turned to the Captain, "I will contact you soon. Do not try to contact me till then, I have exhausted the limits of what I can do in the name of justice."

"I haven't," Garibaldi croaked, "Not by a long shot. I'm isolating Kosh in his quarters till we get diplomatic authority to boot him off the station. We have five ships worth of Gropos we should be able to keep him in a room."

"If you must," Draal shimmered into nothingness, his hologram receding into the floor, "Good luck."

A tinny whistle twittered on the operations consul, whirring in time with a flashing red indicator light. The Captain shook his head in consternation and pressed the button, "Garibaldi please escort Delenn back to her quarters and find accommodations for Father Al'Ashir," Captain Sheridan's face looked stretched, giving him the impression of distinct agedness. He tapped the operations screen, "It would seem that General Hague has finally decided to grace us with his presence."

Delenn looked back at the Captain though the closing door, a distinct feeling of loss running through her. She didn't know why but it seemed like she was unlikely to ever see him again. Things were not going as they should have.

Delenn's world was collapsing in around her and she no longer felt like she could breathe. None of this was supposed to happen, the Vorlons were supposed to guide the younger races in secret, helping them on their path to eventual war with the shadows. It had been foreseen. It was fact. Part of the prophecy that she'd given her life to fulfilling.

She'd entered into the pact, changing her body in the chrysalis willingly knowing that the future would come to pass. Now that prophecy was breaking down in front of her eyes she could not help but feel naked in the face of the future.

She ran her fingers through her hair and tightened her resolve. If the future would not come on its own she would force it to happen.

Even destiny needed help on occasion.

* * *

A/N: Well this update was substantially delayed. I ruptured my eardrum badly and didn't much feel like writing for about a month while my ear healed. Something about constant tinnitus and vertigo rather caused writers block. Now that I'm back in fighting fit regular monthly (ish) updates will resume.

Cheers and as always reviews are greatly appreciated.

And while I don't usually indulge in long authors notes I just wanted to say that I while I do live in Japan I am Gaijin (white).


	15. Chapter 15

Hague was late. Well... he was lat_er_ than John would have preferred. One never made the mistake of implying a General was _late._ But a delay was par the course.

General Hague's fleet arrived around an hour after the fighting ceased. However a meeting with the general was all but impossible in light of the pressing concerns of the moment. Half the station was inaccessible due to fires, decompression and collapsed bulkheads. It had taken a full ten hours for station security to complete their full sweep before John had even considered letting the repair crews at anything other than the critical damage to the station.

It was harrowing, wandering the deathly silence of the station in the damaged areas. Black as a shrouded tomb each corridor held unspoken menace. The Babylon station's recent violation blistering and boiling in the hearts of all his men. Soldiers, robust and vigorous only a week prior dropped to cover at the slightest echo or unexplained whisper, clearly expecting the worst.

However, for all his precautions and desires for vengeance, the threat seemed to have passed. Not even the slightest trace of the Inquisitor's demon remained, only the consequences of it's mayhem. His own office was in a terrible state. Lt. Corwin, unsure what to do with the tech Priest's adepts in the fighting, had tossed them into John's office and sealed the door. Whatever else might be said about the adepts of the machine god, it cannot be said that they were not ready in a crisis.

The neophyte Tech-priests had seen to fortifying the office in the hopes that they might be able to last a prolonged siege. After sealing the air vents with a type of epoxy maintenance assured him would require ten hours with a laser saw to remove they'd painted every wall in the entire room. Odd runes and curious symbols of eagles and weapons spiraled across the ceiling around a crude image of a cog emblazoned with a skull half covered in bionic implants, supposedly for the purpose of repelling demons. Ghastly and hideous though they were, John was loath to have them painted over on the offhand chance that they actually functioned.

He was less inclined, however, to keep his overturned desk where they'd placed it. The long metal slab which had formerly been his table-top stood welded to the floor at an angle so that the adepts might crouch behind it and fire with the small firearms they'd apparently smuggled with them into the station. However the pistols weren't what bothered him. It was the grenade they'd been planning to kill themselves with rather than let the demon eat them.

What sort of place was this empire that children were immediately willing to commit suicide rather than risk capture?

John sat in his comfortable chair, staring at his gutted half desk in contemplation when the General and his entourage of GROPOS entered John's office, accompanied by Lt. Corwin. The Lieutenant, attentive to his duties as always, saluted John and stood at attention, "General Hague to see you sir."

John stood and saluted the general, trying to maintain as much dignity as was possible under the circumstances. He felt oddly small under the gaze of the skull on his ceiling, "Welcome Aboard General."

"Glad to be here Captain, though I wish it were under better circumstances." The General walked around the welded table top, deliberately not mentioning the disarray of John's office. He shot his GROPO bodyguard a look, "Leave us."

"Sir," the stern looking marine elongated the title a bit longer than was necessary, not overtly making it a question but broadly implying his unease.

"Sergeant, there is no immediate danger to me in the Captains office that you won't be able to protect me from on the other side of that door," The general raised an eyebrow sternly, "Am I understood?"

"Yes sir," Lt. Corwin saluted affirmatively, "Of course sir."

The officers watched the enlisted men leave before the General pulled a long sliver device from his pocket, twisting it with a twittering whine and placing it on the husk of John's desk. Neither man spoke till the machine, an electronic surveillance jamming device, chirruped twice. With an exhausted sigh the General clapped John on the back in sympathy, "John I'm sorry. I don't even begin to imagine how you're feeling right now."

"How I'm feeling?" John sputtered, "General it's been over a weeks since I took command of Babylon Five and I haven't heard a word from you... or anyone else for that matter. If you... if anyone had been here just a bit faster... Sir, I'm sorry doesn't cut it."

"John you know how important secrecy is to our goal. I couldn't risk contacting you till I was sure that Clark's people were convinced that you were their man," The General paced the office in preoccupation, "I'd hoped to stay out of contact longer to be frank, but circumstances are against us."

"Hundreds, maybe thousands of people dead sir. Was the secrecy worth it?" John's voice was as much a growl as a whisper.

"Pull yourself together soldier," General Hague's placid reprimand held an icy tinge of danger in his calmness. Had John been any other man, had he not just suffered so resounding a loss, General Hague would have given him the thrashing he deserved for such insubordination, rank be damned, "There is nothing that breaking silence would have achieved other than ending our investigation. Wanting to be here more doesn't make quantium-40 move the ship faster. We _are_ making headway to finding out who killed Santiago but don't be a fool."

"I don't like spying on my own people," John pulled the list of casualties and missing in action from his desk. Some of whom, perhaps all of whom, were dead or dying, "I don't like lying to the men and women that I'm asking to fight for me, treating them like common criminals."

"You know as well as I do that if there was a coup that it would require the assistance of the military," the General sighed empathetically, "We have to assume that some of the Babylon staff was involved in order to get the bombs onto Earth Force 1."

"I don't think any of the command staff was involved," Garibaldi was too rigid, Franklin was too idealistic, Corwin was too unimaginative, and Ivanova was too stubborn to commit treason, "They don't feel right for it."

"John, I trust your judgement. If you think you can trust your people, then trust them. Bring them in on your suspicions," General Hague continued in his infuriatingly reasonable tone, "Discretely."

"Yes, sir. Once things have settled down I'll see to it," John rubbed the back of his neck, "Any word on the Narn-Centauri fleet?"

"It's still strange to hear that said out loud," The General smiled, "A year ago I would have said it was impossible. They left heading to somewhere along their border. The Ambassadors assured me that there was no issue for either of their governments."

"I'm still not convinced they won't start blowing each other up just out of habit," John looked up, startling himself by making eye contact with the skull, "Jesus I hate that thing."

The General followed his gaze, "Have you dealt with the Imperial survivors yet?"

"We've set them up in temporary housing in red sector. The few ships that managed to survive the battle have docked in bay fifteen. There are less than a hundred of them, but they seem more or less willing to keep to themselves," John pulled a printout from the manila folder on his desk, passing the crisp sheet of paper to the general, "The apartments are the size of a postage stamp and the pilots are bunking two men to a room but the accommodations are well received by all accounts."

"I'm surprised they haven't requested to contact the _Endless Bounty_," the General chewed his lip, "We haven't detected any... but they wouldn't would they? They use psychic communications."

"We believe they may have some of the psychic servitors on board their ships in docking bay fifteen, but to be honest sir that's been a pretty low priority so far. And I'm not about to start invading their privacy while they're helping us with repairs," John raised his hand at the general's outraged expression in gentle mollification, "Nothing critical sir, but we haven't been able to stop them from trying to repair things. I think it has to do with growing up on a starship, fixing things makes them more comfortable. We've got them fixing the hydroponics bays. They _really_ like the hydroponics bays."

John wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to get the Imperials to leave the hydroponics bays. The Imperial pilots treated the stations gardens with a reverence and amazement primitive man must have felt for fire. They spoke a dialect unfamiliar to the translation computers but if Galut was to be trusted, and Garibaldi seemed to believe there was no reason to doubt him; The Imperial pilots had likely never seen a park that large before outside of a picture book or from miles in the air.

"That's fine I suppose, but what's this note about the Imperial... Galut? He has been appointed to station security?" The General shook his head, "I'm not sure about that."

"The Imperials are going to be here for an indefinite length of time. They need to have at least somebody in station security who can speak their languages. Garibaldi trusts him enough to give him entry level security clearance. That's good enough for me," John sighed, "If it doesn't work out we can revoke the clearance."

"I suppose, this is all so strange..." The General blinked in shock and looked up from the page he'd been perusing, "Magos Kerrigan? Isn't she some sort of royalty in the Empire?"

"She's a... Well I don't really know what she is in English. She's something between a shaman and tech support really. The "cult of the Omnissiah," are apparently the keepers of all technological and biological information in the Empire," John grimaced, "She's also a class A liability, a cyborg with more built in weapons than I can shake a stick at. But I couldn't exactly turn her away could I?"

"She's been given diplomatic quarters I trust," The General said in a "please tell me you didn't forget to do this" voice.

"She refused them. Said they were "too ostentatious for the disgraced," John shrugged, "She's living out of a scuttled cargo ship that she's repairing. I offered the same to Al'Ashir, the Imperial Priest but he insists that he shouldn't live cloistered from the common people. He used some sort of parable to describe it that I didn't really understand, 'I do not walk with Vandire. But he wants to start a church on the station, a permanent one."

"Yes," the General nodded, chewing his lip, "Yes I think it's a good idea."

"Sir?"

"Sheridan, you are in _very_ hot water right now. There will be an inquest into what has happened so far, and I can't help you when it comes. You need to have some measurable progress to show how helping the Empire has ended up being a net benefit," Hague pointed to the symbols on the ceiling, "You need an easy "win" to point to."

"The Narn and Centauri united to try and do something people had previously believed impossible. We protected an ally with weapons to harm the Vorlons. ISN is haling it as a victory." It was all too unfair, "What more could they possibly want?"

"The Earth, the stars, and more. John you've only seen the beginnings of the media storm that's coming. Pretty soon someone is going to start asking how this could have been avoided, and 'not aiding the Empire' is going to be pretty high on the list of retroactive solutions," The General shrugged, "It isn't your fault. You haven't done anything wrong but unless Clark's administration can point to this as a win somehow heads are going to roll. Getting some sort of technology from this Kerrigan woman or some sort of cultural outreach like the church, or both, would go a long way to securing yourself politically."

"Unbelievable," John realized that he'd balled the folder in his hands into a ball in anger, throwing it to the ground in disgust, "General I'm not even done burying the dead. I'm not about to dance around playing nice for these short sighted morons."

The General was having none of John's self pity, "Don't you dare make this about you. This isn't about you or what you want, this is about what could happen if we end up with some jingoistic human's first whack-a-mole taking your place. Don't dishonor the memory of the people you lost by making their sacrifices in vain. "

"Yes sir," John massaged his temples, "Of course sir... I think... I think I'm just tired."

"John when was the last time you slept?" General Hague looked at the dark circles under John's eyes in genuine concern, "You... you have slept?"

"Well..." John hedged, not willing to outright lie to his superior, "A nap here and there..."

"Get some rest." The General said in a gentle voice he'd never heard before, "Call your parents to let them know you're still alive. I can handle co-ordinating repairs for the next shift."

"Sir I don't know..."

"That was an order John."

"Of course sir," John sighed, the prospect of laying down to sleep more appealing than any other proposal he'd heard that day, "Thank you sir."

"And John."

"Yes sir?"

"It really wasn't your fault."

"I know sir." John sighed, "I just have to get myself to start believing."

* * *

On reflex Daul reached to seize the larynx of the man before him, flailing in confusion when nothing happened. It took him a moment to re-orient himself and see that a fleshy nub of flesh sat where an arm should have been.

The hazy shape of Faest Nor towered above him, figure drawing better into focus as the miraculous anit-agapics flowed into his system. Servo skulls knitted synthetic flesh into his missing skin and osteopathic binding gel into his cracked and fractured limbs.

He winced as he felt binding gel hardening against an exposed nerve, "How long have I been out for?"

"Days," Nor's voice managed to convey a clinically disinterested dispassion for the Inquisitor without implying anything unprofessional, odd considering how much Nor hated him, "We've moved from the Epsilon System to somewhere in Narn territory, the Centari Ambassador has scheduled a rendezvous with our ship a week from now. We should be safe for the moment. Well, as safe as a ship in the warp ever can be."

"Cairn?" Daul clicked his jaw back and forth experimentally. Wet and squelching, an unpleasant popping noise greeted his manipulations accompanied by shooting pain. Agitated by his yelp of discomfort, a servo skull with an odd vice-like protrusion wrenched his dislocated socket back into place with an ear popping squelch.

He wouldn't try that again soon.

"Alive to the best of my knowledge. Tuul implied that he would be fully functioning by the week's end, though without Kerrigan's assistance I don't know if that's simply idle talk," Nor pressed a button on the side of Daul's cot and released the bindings. Daul gingerly lifted himself to a sitting position, the overwhelming feel of pins and needles warring with sore bones to take the brunt of his attention.

"Without Kerrigan? Has something happened to her?" Daul flexed his legs, biting his lip as his right thigh contracted in agony. A knotted mass of muscle contracted, paralyzingly him in pain, "Throne above!"

"Hurt your body and it will gladly return the favor," Nor snapped, rubbing a salve that reeked of menthol into his naked thigh, "The Magos committed mutiny. I don't know the specifics of _how_ exactly but she sabotaged the main guns when Sáclair gave the order to fire."

"The Magos? _Kerrigan?" _So it hadn't been Sáclair's desire to protect his son after all, a prospect Daul found bizarrely disappointing, "What on Earth possessed her to do that?"

"You'd have to talk with the Captain about that," Nor shrugged, "Kerrigan kept her mind to herself and did what she pleased."

Daul raised an eyebrow, "I'm to return to my home then, am I?"

"We kept you sedated for the more serious surgeries, once we're done here you'll be stable enough to return to your quarters under supervision. I've re-assigned a dozen medi-skulls to your personal use," Nor examined the intricate latticework of augmentics honeycombed into the pale scarred flesh of Daul's missing arm. The stump now ended in a round narrow socket covered in the fine sigils of the adeptus mechancius, engraved in golden filagree on the dull sheen of adamantium, "Yes, that's healing quite nicely. You're a lucky man Hilder. This should have bled out. Whoever gave you triage saved your life."

"Did they?" Daul grunted in annoyance. There was no way the Kroot would ever let him live this down if he ever discovered it. Oh Throne, there was no way the Kroot didn't already know. Daul ground his teeth, the indignity of it might well kill him anyway.

Oblivious to Daul's irritation Nor blazed on, "Damn good job, these Alliance know their medicine. I'll have to have a word with Medicus Franklin once we've re-established communications," he twisted something in the electronics and Daul gagged in pain, his left eye twitching as Nor pulled three spindly bundles of cable from the socket. Synthetic nerves might not be as sensitive as the real thing, but having them so callously jerked about wasn't pleasant, "I need to start looking into alternative methods for some of my more hard case patients."

Daul followed the man's eyes across the row of beds in the room, most of who's occupants were lying in blissful comatose slumber. A young man dressed in the crimson and gold of house Sáclair sat slumped over in one of the uncomfortable metal chairs, snoring contentedly. His fingers were interlocked with those of the girl in the bed next to him, holding her as though she might slip away at any moment, "David Sáclair."

"Yes. And Bonafila Enzo, the boy hasn't left her side except for when I kick him out to make sure he keeps eating. He'd sleep here too if I let him," Nor sighed sympathetically his fingers ceasing their weave, "She's been improving lately, even a couple lucid moments, but I don't know if it will last in the long run. The poor dear."

"Her father doesn't approve of them," Daul smiled slightly, "But you do."

"I haven't a clue what you're on about," Nor was so startled by the accusation that he stopped weaving the nerves, "I abide by her father's wishes to the letter."

"It's a bit late for visiting hours. I see no chaperone." Daul smiled, "And I'd wager when you kick him out to grab a bite to eat coincides with when her parents come to visit."

Nor ignored Dauls chain of logic with a deliberate sniff that only served to convice Daul he was correct, "Your apprentice refused her medical checkup. She nearly tore my head off when I tried to examine her injuries. I admit Gazan is a competent medic but she really ought to be properly looked over by a qualified Medicus."

"I'll be in your quarters later on tomorrow to check on you," Nor untwisted a knotted bit of synthetic nerves in a single deft motion that set Daul's body into a rictus jerk as the sensation of burning rushed across his body, "Do try to convince your apprentice to permit a medical check when I arrive."

"I'm not surprised by her reticence. Her apprenticeship is... more complicated than the average one," In the hustle and bustle of the events on station the Lieutenant Commander had genuinely slipped from his memory. Kidnapping a foreign military official seemed trite and pedestrian by comparison to exorcising a demon but it could be no less dangerous to him in the long run, "She is a special case."

"She's a firebrand," Nor's lip quirked at the side as he untwisted another gut wrenching bundle of synthetic nerves, "And she doesn't much care for you."

"You disapprove of my choice of apprentice," Daul glared imperiously at the Medicus, doing his best to convey his absence of interest in the Nor's' opinion.

"Absolutely not," Nor pulled a long cedar box from a cabinet, "She's a wonderful judge of character."

Daul made an uncooth gesture with his remaining hand, too exhausted to waste energy on wit. Nor eyed his fingers in disapproval, "I will be glad to amputate those fingers you if you don't put them down this instant, Inquisitor or not you will be civil in my surgery."

"I believe you were casting aspersions about my character not even a minute ago," Daul huffed.

"It's a perk of being the Medicus," Nor set the box on the cot next to Daul and opened it, revealing a sleek prosthetic. Covered in filagree and the sort of ivory ornamentation favored by the nobility of the bounty it seemed more like a set piece from a holo-drama than a functional augmentic. No expense had been spared, even the individual fingers were set with patterns of ivory carved into the holy symbols of Imperial faith, "You get to tell people the truth about themselves. Now are you going to continue being obstreperous or am shall I replace your arm?"

"You are a supremely irritating man," Daul said, lifting his hand in surrender. Nor attached the artificial nerves with a jaw gnashingly painful deftness, calloused hands weaving the nerves into the connectors in an elaborate lacework of circuitry.

"That should do it," Nor weaved the last of the fibers together and pressed a red button on the inside of the socket in Daul's shoulder, sucking the interconnected fibers into the arm and pulling the arm into place. The magnetic bindings in the shoulder snapped into place, tinny clicking servos grinding as the arm bound itself to the Inquisitior's body. Daul clenched his new fist on reflex, gaudy augmentic digits denting the metal railing on the bed. Daul's vision swam as his brain struggled to cope with the regained sensation of his new appendage.

"Throne above that hurts worse than losing it," Daul snarled, furious at Nor's apparent and unconcealed enjoyment of his discomfort.

"It will take you a while to regain your reflexes and be able to safely use your new arm," Nor tapped the digits with a small hammer, testing the augmentic arm's reflexes and ignoring Daul entirely, "The arm I fitted you with is a permanent prosthesis, no need to take it off before bathing or swimming. If you get any adverse reactions to the implant or it doesn't function properly contact me immediately. Once you've managed to get back into the change of clothes Jak brought from your quarters I'll call one of the Lionhearts to take you to the Captain. He wants to debrief you on what has happened so far."

The doctor jabbed Daul's bare chest with a bony digit, "Normally after a medically induced coma and attaching a prosthesis I demand that my patients get a month's bed rest and two months of physical therapy, but we both know you're just going to ignore my advice and do your best to work yourself to an early grave so I'm going to save myself the time and effort of lecturing you on the stupidity of lying to your Medicus. Just try not to lose any more parts of yourself in the immediate future."

"I'll do my best," Daul sighed, "But it's probably best I see to something before going to the Sáclair. Where is my apprentice? My quarters or has she had to be placed in a holding cell to stop her from trying to escape?"

"The Lady Sáclair has been seeing to your apprentice's education while you've been indisposed. She's taken quite a liking to her," Nor's voice brimmed with approval, "Taking her under her wing."

"Throne help me." Daul shuddered as an ominous cold shot of sensation washed over his spine. Nothing good could come of this, the Lady Sáclair held no love for him, "Very well then. To Sáclair's it is then."

* * *

The security Guard motioned for Abbas and Orr to follow him as he strode towards docking bay fifteen, leading the way around the repair teams. Abbas liked Lou.

Near as Abbas could tell, the man's job was to make sure that the Imperials were fitting in to station life. He patrolled the corridors of the station that had been designated as Imperial apartments, aided by a particularly vicious looking Ogryn. Rumor had it that the Inquisitor left the Ogryn on the station to take out anyone who stepped out of line. There was even supposed to be a crazed Arco-flagellant in the brig gifted to the Captain of the station in case of emergencies.

But nobody had any sort of rumors or suspicions about Lou, he was about as devious as a pigmy grox. The portly security officer wasn't stern or severe at he'd expected a station security officer to be so soon after an attack, not suspicious or combative as one would expect. He'd, in his own clumsy way, become like a friendly uncle. He couldn't speak a word of gothic, so his communication with Abbas and Orr had been limited to pantomime and occasional drawings, but his genuine enthusiasm needed no translation.

He'd even cooked for the Apprentices on their first night. His cooking, though far from elegant, was hearty and satisfying. The exotic thick flatbread cakes drizzled with some sort of brown sugary syrup and yellow yolked eggs were much to Abbas' liking, though Orr seemed hesitant to trust them.

It wasn't Orr's fault really. Having grown up in the slums, the boy had practically grown up on reconstituted nutrient supplements and gruel. His pallet was simply unprepared for the more rich flavors of the food. He was a funny child really, educated in the manner of the common people of the _Endless Bounty_ he occasional had queer ideas about the way the world was supposed to work.

The boy had swooned when he'd realized that the modest room Lou led them two was intended for the two of them. "Throne above," he's sighed as he flung himself onto one of the bunks, flipping the lights on and off, "This must have been what it was like to live in the Captain's palace eh' Abbas."

He hadn't had the heart to tell the boy that the room would have barely been the size of his closet and not even close to as large as his bathroom. He regularly found himself in baffling position of trying to downplay his former good fortune, something that as the bastard son of Sáclair hadn't ever come up before. But that largely had to do with Orr not even particularly understand the concept of children being born out of wedlock.

"Abbas, I don't know what you're on about," he'd said, "Your ma' and da' are the ones who raise you. Who gives a tinker's toss if they were married or not?" The boy just didn't understand the way the world actually worked. Still... he couldn't hold it against the boy, it wasn't Orr's fault that he was uneducated.

It was as they rounded the bend and walked past another cluster of xenos that he had another one of his more unique musings, "Hey Abbas. Have you ever noticed how most xenos look a bit like us."

Abbas followed his gaze, sighing exasperatedly, "I don't recall ever having seen an orange human with black spots."

"No I mean like five fingers, one head, two legs, that sort of thing. Think about the races we worry about, Orks, Eldar, and Tau." He counted them down on his fingers, "They've all got the same sort of shape."

"The Tau have three fingers don't they?" Where did these thoughts come from... honestly, "And hooves?"

"Yeah but they have the whole two arms, two legs situation," Orr shrugged, "It's just weird to me that all the races that can talk look alike. Almost like it was planned or summut."

"Orr, there are tons of races that don't look like us or move like us," Abbas pointed at a group of insectoid things in black suits right outside the wide doors to the docking bay, "And what about the Tyranids? I think people just tend to only talk about the ones that are easier for us to understand."

"You understand the Orks?" Orr looked at the imperial ships, "Maybe you should be an Inquisitor."

"I... I don't think there's a whole lot to understand when it comes to Orks Orr," Abbas laughed, "All the books I've read seem to indicate that 'pointy thing goes in the other guy' is about as complex as they get."

They didn't talk much as they made their way through the bay, it was too loud. The space echoed with the deep grinding and throbbing of heavy machinery, sounding from all corners of the room. An wave of servitors and pilots wandered the room carrying tools and talking in loud voices. An occasional xenos would wander in to the bay, only to quickly turn around and leave as the collective glares of the pilots made it abundantly clear that they didn't belong, except of course the Alliance officers who were simply ignored.

The comforting sight of hundreds of servo skulls pleased Abbas greatly. The chipper craniums floated about the room, completing their repairs and gibbering in binary with each other. He knew that they were sharing technical data and tasks with other mono-tasked devices but there was something pleasantly conversational about them. They flew in circles around the room, forming a funnel down to an unassuming ship and it's familiar crewman.

Abbas pushed his way past Lou, sprinting the ten yards to the ship and tossing himself at the midriff of a woman he feared he might never see again. He grunted as Orr collided into him from behind, trying to hug them both. His eyes full of tears of joy he laughed uproariously, "Magos Frist. I can't believe its you. This is just too wonderful!"

"Mistress how did you get here? How can we help?" Orr's face lit up with excitement as Abbas knew his own had. They both looked expectantly at the Magos, thrilled to finally know that they were back where they belonged.

The Magos, doubtless choked with the her own emotions at their reunion, warbled in a mechanical morose keen, "I... I'm glad to see the both of you as well. Orr," her voice hitched and she looked at them with sad eyes set into burned and ragged flesh, "Abbas."

Lou said a few words in the Alliance language and nodded in polite greeting to the Magos. She returned the gesture as best she could around her apprentices, waving in goodbye as the man walked away across the bay in the direction of the beginnings of a fist fight between two pilots.

Abbas brimmed with pride at the extra attention she'd paid to his own name, "Magos why are you here? We thought that you'd left with everyone else."

"Your father...your father sent me here," She said it deliberately, as though unsure of her words, "I... I'm here because I tried to create an escape route for you. It did not work out as I had planned."

Abbas practically beamed with confidence. _His father loved him_. For the first time in his life he was sure of it. He would be able to be taught by the Magos and it was because his father had made sure that he would not be trapped with the demon. He might not be with his father any more but he _would _make him proud.

Orr bounced on his heels and held up his sachel of tools, "Mistress what can we do to help."

The Magos, ever eager for a project, clapped her hands and summoned a servo skull. The servitor device hovered in front of her, projecting an image of the cargo ship, "Come on then boys, we have much to do, so much to do."

As Abbas listened to her talk about containment fields and relay patterns he smiled and listened to the shouts, laughter and chatter of pilots. Even if it wasn't the _Endless Bounty_ he was finally back where he belonged.

* * *

The Imperial treatment of prisoners was astonishing in it's grimness. The day to day needs of the prisoners were attended to by glassy eyed servitors, none of whom seemed to be gifted with an over-abundance of cleverness. Each servitor apparently served a single role in eternal repetition, his body augmented to compliment the needs of that role.

A particularly unhygienic servitor with a canister built into his spinal column came to the cell twice a day after the call to prayers and poured a congealed mess that might once have been food into a long trough in the cell from which the prisoners were to serve themselves. There was no shortage of the stew, none of the prisoners seemed in any particular rush to consume large portions of it.

Vir half heartedly poked at the brownish slop in his bowl with his finger, agitating the viscous skin of congealed rancid meat in an effort to determine if it was edible. It was a sign of how truly vile the food was that in his starvation he'd only been able to convince himself to sniff the bowl once before giving up on the matter entirely.

His whole body ached from the beating the guards had given him for resisting being tossed into his cell. Chubby fingers massaged the thick red and purple welt across his face marking where security smashed him in the face. It was unlikely his nose would ever heal properly after being dislocated and untreated for hours.

His cell mates, a gaggle of Imperial prisoners, spent most of the first day either glaring at him with their unnerving stares or pointedly excluding him from their conversations. Every once and a while they bickered in their native language, speaking too fast for Vir to understand more than their general distaste for incarceration and mistrust of him. His own elaborate costume had not escaped the attention of his cell mates, the bright purple and gold of his jacket clashed glaringly with the brown and red woolen sack cloth of the Imperial prisoners.

They were as alien to Vir as any species he'd ever met. This sweaty, swarthy, and obviously malnourished collection of miscreants stood out in stark contrast to the immaculately dressed and physically stunning Imperial citizens in the Inquisitor's retinue.

Realizing the worth of the Vir's jewelry, a brutish excuse for a human being shambled over to him and pinned him to the wall by the throat. Air seemed a distant luxury as the sharp jagged edge of his prison shiv gleamed in the hellish half dark of their cell, reflecting the faces of the men now intently ignoring them both. With stiff anticipation four deft swipes liberated the buttons of his coat.

He'd kicked Vir for good measure after dropping him to the floor, relishing Vir's whimpers of fear and disbelief. The man liberated him of his shoes as he gasped for air, hearts thundering in his ears in irregular terrified bursts of panic. It wasn't fair. What had he done to deserve this? What wrong had he visited upon these men that entitled them to what was his? Nothing, nothing other than their own greed.

Filled furious iniquity and blessed with the atrophied hereditary strength of his pre-historic carnivorous forefathers, Vir bit down hard on the hand of a man to tear the broach from his breast, filthy man flesh tearing beneath his sharp canines. Coppery flesh wrapped bundles of bone and gristle cracked beneath his bite with satisfying aplomb, shredding the flesh as the man reflexively recoiled.

Wiping the sticky mess from his lower lip Vir stood and faced his attacker, watching the formidable man cradle his useless mauled paw. The man swung at Vir with a clumsy haymaker, abruptly falling to the floor as his head burst in a shower of superheated meat. Horrified and confused, Vir screamed in shock, looking around the cell for some plausible explanation for the man's spontaneous combustion.

His eyes fell upon the supremely welcome sight of a guard garbed in the familiar livery of the Endless bounty leaning in through the now open door of Vir's cell. A jaunty gold leaf lion perched upon the crimson armor of his breastplate grinning in parody of the man's own dark frown. Maker be blessed, an officer of the law.

Eager to express his gratitude to his savior, Vir smiled placatingly and raised his hands palm up in a sign of surrender before crossing them before himself in the symbol he'd seen the Inquisitor use as a symbol of greeting a dozen times and spoke the words of greeting he'd memorized just in case.

It was a mistake.

The big man lifted him off the ground by his hair and frog marched him out of the cell, cruelly twisting and flexing his wrist to force Vir to dance on tip toe as he slammed the cell door shut. The big man's face contorted into a rictus of hatred, "Sitzen spumae!"

Vir swallowed trying to dislodge the thick lump of fear wedged in his neck. The man couldn't realistically expect Vir to understand him, it would be insane. The Gothic language hadn't been in known space for more than a month.

The man howled, "Xenos spumare," then punched him in the gut with the full force of his gauntleted fist, the soft flesh of his belly reverberating with the popping squelch of cracked ribs as the big man swept Vir's feet out from under him with a kick behind the ankles. The screams and shouts of prisoners up and down the cell block echoed ominously, catcalling, cheering, and protesting incoherently in a disharmonious cacophony of sound and horror.

Vir whimpered in pained confusion as the man pressed an armored boot into his neck, slowly cutting off the airflow, "Quam usudujete vobis! Me te umbrigen huis aqui."

"I don't understand," Vir coughed and scrambled his chubby fingers over the man's feet, trying to remove him, yelping as his fingers cut on barbed scraps of metal jutting out from the mail shirt beneath the silk tabard of his armor, "Please, I don't understand."

Vir's eyes bulged as the man drew the gun from his belt and forced it between his lips, the smooth metal of it's deathly cold barrel menacing in it's immaculate purpose. He tried to protest tried to explain but the man couldn't have cared less. He continued his furious rant, snarling and growling in the Imperial language. Flecks of spittle came from the man's near foaming mouth, splattering over his long braided beard.

"I'm sorry," Vir mumbled through the mouth full of gun, though it came out more like "muh-mummy," "I'm so sorry." Apologies didn't matter, the fact that he didn't understand what the man was saying didn't matter, it never had mattered. The man hadn't brought him out of the cell to have any questions answered, not really.

Every Centauri knew that look, it was the same expression the old guard wore when talking about the "good old days" of the Republic, back when the subjugation and wholesale slavery of worlds and nations was commonplace. Bloodthirsty morbid self righteousness as dangerous as the greatest madness to forsake the senses, Vir was just there to be his punching bag. The man would shoot Vir without provocation just because he could, because it would make him feel superior.

The man's finger drew in, taught on the pistol's trigger, before a chamber pot sailed out from nowhere, colliding with squarely with the man's face and covering his front in a disgusting mess of excrement. The man backed away from Vir in confused shock, wiping the filth from his face and firing blindly in the direction the chamber pot came from.

A scarred and grime covered human fell to the ground in his cell in an agonized heap, stone dead and clutching a fist sized hole the man's pistol made in his chest. He died staring into Vir's eyes, a look of great satisfaction plastered across his skeletal face, gaunt from decades of incarceration and starvation.

Vir scrambled backwards across the floor, getting as much space between himself and the man. His heart pounded with every slippery, scrambling crawl of his furious crab-walk. He had no idea where he was going and he didn't care. Just _away_ would be enough for him.

He rounded a corner and came face to face with the startled visage of Jak, who at that moment might have been the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his entire life. The Inquisitor's translator stopped mid stride, his convulsing body awkwardly pulsing with confusion, "What in the Throne's name?"

Vir's answer came in the form of a furious downward stomp from the excrement covered man's heavy boot to his groin, knocking the wind out of him as it depressed his secondary bladder. Not as painful to a Centauri as to a human, but unpleasant enough to silence him, Vir crawled into a ball and wrapped his arms around his sides to protect his organs.

Jak held out an arm between the man and Vir in a gesture of mild rebuke, altogether too relaxed for vir's liking. He wanted Jak to yell, to scream, to chastize, to do something to stop this lunatic but Jak continued his pleasant chat, "Quid facens Rasha? Xenos sunt geschützt."

"Geschützt, sict inferno sie sind," With deliberate menace the large man raised his pistol, still smoking slightly from it's recent discharge, clear in his malevolent intentions. Jak neither moved nor gave sign that he'd even particularly noticed the imminent threat upon his person other than to look down at Vir, "Mister Cotto, I apologize for my lateness. I only had a chance to debrief Vira'capac this morning in the rush to see to other matters. I will see to Section leader Rasha and then we can deal with the necessary paperwork."

The diminutive scribe reached into his robes, rummaging lackadaisically through it's inner pockets and muttering to himself as though he'd misplaced something mid errand. With a screech of indignity at being ignored the filthy man fired his weapon at Jack. Terrified for Jak's safety but too terrified to move Vir watched in wonderment as the beam of light curved away from Jak, sliding across a thin skin of translucent energy and into a harmless flash.

Jak looked at the man in outright bewilderment, apparently realizing only _now_ that the security officer Rasha was a possible threat to his safety. His fingers, surprisingly deft for a man who suffered from regular seizures, stowed the scroll and pulled out an icon intimately familiar to Vir. One just like it was chained to his neck by a thin length of twine he'd liberated from the bottom of his bunk. The icon given to him by Vira'capac.

Realizing it's importance at Rahsa's expression of horror Vir pulled his own icon out and stood up nervously, staying close to Jak in case the man decided to start shooting again. He didn't know of Jak's shield would protect them both but it was worth the gamble.

Rasha looked as though he'd just bitten into rancid meat, his lips puckered inward in horror and the gun fell from his hands to the floor nearly as fast as he he dropped to his knees to plead for forgiveness. Covered in filth and sobbing the man kissed the ground in front of Jack, pleading.

Jak flicked his hand in a wave of errant dismissal, apparently already bored of the distraction. The security officer fled as fast as his legs would carry him, eager to be away from the two of them and his newly granted sense of shame. Watching the guard's retreating back with mild curiosity he pulled out a scroll from his robes and tapped in on the palm of his right hand, "What did you do to incense him?"

"What did _I do? _Maker's teeth, I didn't do anything. I greeted him and he went berserk," Vir replicated the Imperial bow and phrase twice waving his arms in a hurried mess of awkward gesticulation, "He's nuts! Totally whacko."

Jak covered his lips to stifle a fit of giggles, struggling to keep his composure as he picked the pistol off the ground, "You greeted _Rasha_ with the sign of the Aquilla and said 'I bring you blessings of the Emperor, may you one day find his light?"

"Yes," Vir pulled at his unkempt mess of hair, tugging at the disarray from two days without bathing. Jak did not have to be so insufferably blasé about his near murder, "I did the exact pronunciation and gestures the Inquisitor did!"

"That was... unwise," Jak's giggles were under control but his lip still twitched as though he would very much like to start again as he walked back in the direction of Vir's cell, "It is a religious greeting missionaries give to... heretics and those who have not been taken into the creed who aren't beyond redemption... generally while they're still slaves."

"The Inquisitor has been greeting Ambassador Mollari that way all month... he added it to our official documents on how to greed members of the Empire," Ducking to avoid a passing servitor skull Vir massaged his temples in frustration, more than slightly insulted at the implication. Londo might not have been the best man in the universe but he deserved more respect than that, especially from someone who he'd gone great, even insane, lengths to assist.

Jak sighed clearly reading the Vir's mood, unsurprising really. Vir had never been particularly skilled at concealing his emotions, "Mr. Cotto, it is only insulting to refer to an Imperial Citizen in that way. It is the socially formal greeting for someone someone who is not in the Imperial faith. As a non-human it is the highest socially acceptable greeting he could give Ambassador Mollari. A sign of respect."

"But not to the Imperials," Vir swallowed, "He shot a man in cold blood who tried to defend me, the one who tossed the chamber pot at him."

"Yes," Jak nodded unconcernedly, "That is oft...often the preferred solution for unruly prisoners."

"He was going to kill me." Vir nodded to the pistol in Jak's hand.

"Yes," Jak put the pistol into a pocket of his robes, distaste etched in his features for the weapon and it's owner, "Though I suspect he would have t...tortured you first. He's an executioner from a f...family who has been executioners for five hundred years. He isn't k...known for his c...charming demeanor."

"Why? What could I possibly have done to deserve that," Vir didn't realize he was shouting till Jak backed away from him in shock, "I have done _nothing_ that deserved more than a reprimand, perhaps a punch if he was really annoyed... but _death_ for a poor choice of words? It's wrong!"

"At least he didn't realize you were xenos," Jak sighed, "He wouldn't have wasted the time beating you."

"What?"

"It's dogma to abhor the alien," Jak waved dismissively, "There is a reason that we've been somewhat elusive about the specifics of the Imperial creed... it is... more... severe than that to which you are accustomed... more forceful."

"Care to run that by me again?" Vir squawked.

Jak considered the matter, his stutter more pronounced with every syllable as his concentration shifted from enunciation, "The vast majority of the races b...bordering the Empire are more... unreasonable than those we've encountered here. Our p...policies in foreign relations are... c...colored by millenia of c...conflict. I have l...little doubt the Ecclesiarchy will g...grant the C...Centauri some special dispensation for services rendered, there is precedent for it and Daul is fond of you b...but more aggressive policies are generally preferred by the Empire."

"Dispensation to do what exactly?"

"Exist," Jak said, as though the answer ought to have been obvious to anyone paying attention, "Now are you going to follow me back to your place in the Inquisitor's apartments? We're on a rather tight schedule."

"No," Vir stopped midway down the corridor. Looking the a cell full of hard eyed men, "We're not."

"No?" Jak's displeasure oozed off of every syllable as he turned in a slow, fidgeting circle to face Vir, "And why not?"

"Because I'm not leaving people to just rot in some cell while the jailers look for excuse to shove a gun in their mouth," Vir pulled the icon out from his shirt, "If this is what they need to protect them then this is what I want them to get."

"Mr. Cotto you are exhausted and no doubt starving. I... appreciate that, our j...justice system is none of your b...business. You will not change f...fifty thousand years of our culture in an afternoon." Jak pressed his hand to a biometric sensor on the exit from the prison, "But if you really do w...want to commit them to a lifetime of s...service to the Inquisitor I would s...suggest learning about your own obligations before committing others to your c...cause. I suspect they w...would prefer to finish their incarceration or servitude if g...given the choice."

"This isn't just an identification badge is it?" Vir sighed, already knowing the answer wasn't going to sit well with him.

"No it isn't" Jak confirmed, "C...congratulations Mr. Cotto. You are the newest acolyte of Inquisitor Hilder until such time as he has no use for you or you die in his service. And he _will_ find a use for you Mr. Cotto. Inquisitor Hilder does not waste resources as useful as yourself."

"I'm not feeling especially inclined to be useful," Vir crossed his arms and thumbed the frayed fabric where his buttons had been cut off.

"Then I s...suppose you'd prefer that we put an Imperial agent in c...charge of facilitating c...co-habitation between the hundred Narn and C...centauri survivors of our recent conflict with the Vorlons," Jak's sarcasm splattered out with each hiccuped word, "Mr. C...cotto. As of right now you are your nations A...ambassador. I'm here to extend full diplomatic status to you on b...behalf of your empire. "

Annoyed, furious, embarrassed and hungry Vir gave up arguing and followed the man out of the cell block, trying not to remember the horrible sight of the man's head exploding. Years later he would look back on the incident and realize that he'd gone numb from the trauma of what had happened to him, regressing to a distant part of his mind in shock. But as he followed the seizing gait of Jak, annoyed that his jacket no longer fit him properly without its buttons and would need to be tailored at the earliest possible moment.

* * *

Hexathelidae lay naked across a settee, back arched in pleasure as a lithe serving girl massaged scented oils into the curves of her body with practiced dexterity. She cooed with great satisfaction, "I must visit you more often Latrodectus. Your hospitality is entirely adequate."

"I'm glad to be of service," Sørian's servants were well suited to their tasks, and tailored to their master's unique predilictions. Blinded, bound, gagged, and tied to the wall with a length of chain she'd spent the better part of the past fifteen years attached to that wall and learning the proper way to entertain her betters. He'd keep her that way till she died or he grew bored of her.

Sørian disliked permitting Hexathelidae access to his house and toys, but all pretense of anonymity was long past the point of practicality and he'd gone too long without indulging in the services of a serving girl. He had to assume that the Amon Sui knew his identity, as well as that of his co-conspirator. And, much to his dislike, he knew that Hexathelidae had confirmation of his identity as well.

The daughter of Sáclair had seen to that quite nicely. What had possessed the girl to go by herself into the back alleys of the slums by herself was beyond him, ignorance perhaps. The girl was so accustomed to the world being safe and manageable in her daily life that it was greatly unlikely that she knew her role in life, what was expected of a lesser woman. Low born women kicked, they screamed, they fought back but eventually they learned their place in spite of their mewling.

The serving girl kneeling between his legs was a fantastic example. Grabbed off the streets for having piqued his interest it had only taken a matter of weeks for his mistress of the house to force the Belzafester girl into a pliably amusing diversion. She still sobbed and lamented her fate in private, but that only made her submission all the sweeter.

Ami's soft curves and pale flesh had been obvious, tantalizing, even beneath the thick veils. Her innocence and modesty all the more begging for corruption. When he first noticed the security officer indulging in some well earned recreation he'd stopped, afraid to draw attention to himself. Hexathilidae was in no state for combat, her ragged and ripped flesh was only being held together by synthaskin and her own brand of sorceries. If they stayed in the shadows they might be able to tap into the lust and suffering of the girl to heal Hexathilidae further. How could he blame the security officer for indulging in that most human of passions?

All thoughts of staying out of it were silenced when he'd seen her face more clearly. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Emanuelle Sáclair, by the gods she was. The violation of a daughter heir would be enough to have anyone who's DNA was found in the sector summarily executed just to make a point. The last thing he needed was for Sáclair and Daul to become united purpose.

There were enough ambient sorcerous energies leaking off of him for the blasted Inquisitor to put two and two together, blaming _Sørian_ for the girls violation. That would not do at all.

So he'd saved her, cradling her in his arms till they'd reached the estates of the Lord and Lady Sáclair. Hexathilidae shot murderous looks at the young girl all the while, hate burning in the back of her eyes. Not out of love, to be certain her capacity for so human a feeling burned out long ago but out of pure selfish jealousy. They woman could not have cared less about Sørian, except in so far as she was certain his affections should not go to another woman.

"We should have killed her," Hexathelidae purred and walked over to him, taking care not to interrupt the girl between his legs. The sharp edges of the claw-like tips of her jewel encrusted velvet gloves scraped his chest invitingly combining the slight hitch in her voice that always accompanied discussions of violence in a poorly concealed effort to distract him from reason. Her ample bosom heaved suggestively as she whispered, "We still could."

"Hexathelidae you truly have no imagination," Sørian sighed, brushing the warm and welcoming hands away from his chest, not deceived by Hexathelidae's feigned romantic attentions, "Ami is a resource better kept breathing than dead. As she ripens into maturity we can ensure that she is properly educated to our way of thinking. "

"She knows you were there," Hexathelidae growled, "She knows who you are."

"And you as well Lady Huin," Sørian stated, amused by the woman's frustration. Hexathelidae had been terrified when Ami called her by name, "As do our enemies, at least those who know us to be enemies. However with her we have the bonus of gratitude. She will keep us secret because she feels loyal to us, we can use that to great effect my Lady. Of that I assure you. "

"I dislike this," Hexathelidae bristled at the use of her name. For courtesies' sake they'd continued using their code names with each other so far, it felt unnatural to use their naked appellations, "The Amon Sui will not settle for just letting us escape. They will come for us again."

"Of course they will," Sørian smiled and reclined in his, "But I wouldn't worry about it greatly."

"I find death is often worth worrying about when it is not for the glory of the dark gods," she said with a pre-occupied expression on her face that spoke more of Lady Huin's fears than Hexathelidae's, "They take a grim view of those who die foolishly."

"They take a grim view of those who die at all," Sørian's body heaved in completion and he slapped the servant girl with the back of his hand, flinging her to the floor where she sobbed in confusion. Unworthy of his continued attention he kicked her across the face, knocking her unconscious and silencing her, "Which is why I intend to avoid it entirely. No, we are going to remove the threat of the Amon Sui before it comes to that."

"And how do you intend to do that?" Aroused by the show of force Hexathelidae pinned Sørian to the chair, pulling a knife from the God's alone knew where, and proceeded to rub the flat of the blade across his chest and shoulders. The implied threat, innuendo and the closeness of flesh to flesh left his breathing ragged as he struggled to keep his mind in tact.

Gods had it been that hard to concentrate moments ago? "Why my dear Hexathelidae. We tell the Terrier where there are rats."

Hexathelidae looked back at him blankly. Apparently the metaphor had been lost on her. Sørian's wit was wasted on the cultist, "Hex. We help the Inquisitor find them."

"We... What!" The cultist screamed in fury, leaping back from Sørian's lap as though she'd trodden on an adder. The servant chained to the wall, long trained in often capricious moods of her master's associates, retreated into a recessed section of wall behind a tapestry, "I will not help that blind servant of the corpse god!"

"Hex, I'm not talking about biting the bullet and riding beneath the banner of the Aquilla into hellfire and glory. We only need to toss him pieces of information to get him looking for our betrayers and not us. Inquisitor Hilder," Sørian growled the name like it was the name of something foul beneath his boots, "Is a fool who worships the god of fools, but he has the resources and the tenacity we need to uproot the Amon Sui."

"And if he finds us?" Hexathelidae's white knuckled fingers crept round the hilt of her blade. Sørian, realizing the very real danger he was in, surreptitiously pressed the button beneath the handle of his chair, not enough to activate it but enough that he could do so in less than a heart beat. He hadn't been so foolish as to enter a room with Hexathelidae unarmed and unprotected. Her blade would not do much against a repulsion field and a dozen pistol mounted servo skulls.

"He won't. He won't be looking for us. He won't even know that we're remotely connected to anything," Sørian chuckled and waved his left arm in absurd pantomime, " And even if he does, what does he have on us? That we're afraid of the Amon Sui and handing him tips on how to catch them? How horrible. Get out the gallows, somebody is helping! Guards! Seize him."

Hexathelidae didn't stop glaring at him but she relaxed her hold on the knife, the muscles in her arms and back relaxing to their normal delicious taughtness, "And how do you propose we go about collecting information? My own spies have revealed little that I did not already know. Any leads I had to the leadership of the Amon Sui died in the explosion, there are other cells but I haven't the remotest clue where to try and find them."

"We're going to look to an extraplanar source," Sørian stood from his chair, walked over to a tapestry of the Emperor and pulled it aside. Jars and boxes of spell components hissed, spat, growled, shone, glimmered and glowed in the intimate candle-light of his study, "If you'd be so kind as to move that?"

Hexathelidae pulled aside the carpet he motioned to, revealing a six foot wide circle of hexegrammic and demonic runes carved into the stone of his floor and inset with cold iron and silver. The death cultist scratched the symbols before giving an approving nod, "You've been busy since we parted."

"I have," Sørian pulled a jar of maggot larvae from the shelf and started smashing them into paste with his mortar and pedestal, adding a pinch of sulfur with every seventh smash, "Though not with that circle. It was put there by my father I believe. Perhaps it was my grandfather. Not for demonic summoning mind you, in case the station got boarded by demons. It was a sort of panic room."

"It would never have worked for that," Hexathelida pointed to the fifth inverted "ang" rune, "It directs energies inward. It would have trapped the demon inside with whoever activated the circe."

"I doubt they knew, they were probably too ashamed to admit they had it to ever check that it worked," Sørian added a generous measure of grox tooth and the gall bladder of a Nxy Fiend to the paste, smashing it to a foul smelling milky white green that resembled spoiled custard, "But it will suit our needs quite nicely. "

Hexalthelidae gagged as he walked past with the paste, "By the Gods what is that?"

"An offering," Sørian sighed, she really had an astonishing lack of knowledge of the alternate divinities, "You'll want to grab some of the oil of hessal from my desk and rub it under your nose. This will be... unpleasant."

Sørian placed the bowl in the center of his summoning circle and cut his palm, dripping seven drops into the bowl then placed three circles of seven stars on each of the rings of containment, rubbing each with his own blood. It was not a ritual he'd completed in a long time, having long since passed the point of praying to the other divinities, but he was more than competent in its completion.

He growled the words of prayer, speaking the true name of the creature he wished to summon, whispering the last part of the name to himself to guard its secret from his co-conspirator. He chanted the name for seven counts of seven before the room began to smell of foetid meat and bile, all things acrid and dying, "Come to me Nuf'da'gul'ge'ke'goosh'kran. We seek your wisdom bearer of the twelfth order of final sorrows."

The paste of maggots stirred and shifted, full grown flies crawling from it in droves. First ten, then a hundred, then a thousand flies buzzed within the confines of the circle, bouncing off each other and the walls, hissing and howling in their tiny confused buzzes. The constant hum of their wings echoed like the screams of those suffering and dead, howling laughter and lament.

They coalesced and spun, weaving the paste into a vaugely human form, knitting and kneading the paste into a pustules and boils. The figure of the demon, malformed and misshapen, shambled and hopped as half full mouths and glassy eyes opened and closed in places no mortal creature would have either. Purplish black intestines dangled from a perforated belly and trailed jauntily along the ground, squelching beneath the monster's feet.

A single gargantuan eye clouded by a millennia-old cataract hung loosely from the inverted and pus filled eye socket in the dead center of the creature's face. It rounded it's unseeing eye on Sørian, opened its garish beak and droned in hideous monotony, "You do not belong."

"Yes, that does seem to be the consensus," Sørian sighed a breath of relief. It didn't seem that the creature could break his barriers, else the flies would have been buzzing about the room. They weren't really insects, merely aspects of the demon, "I have questions for you creature. I wish to know of the Amon Sui who attacked me. Where the are, how they meet. Everything I need to know to destroy them."

"And what do you offer for this boon?" The creature droned in boredom, his voice buzzing with the sound of flies nestling beneath his flesh. The creature pulled a maggot ridden boil from its chest and popped it between its lips, chewing with relish.

"For your promise of non-violence to anyone on this ship, leaving no diseases to harry us, answering my questions and departing when I bid you to do so I offer you this," Sørian lifted the unconscious serving girl from the floor, her face blissful in its loveliness, hale of cheek and pure of spirit. Innocent, young, and luscious, a perfect offering. She was far from untouched, though followers of Nurgle were interested in purity of a different sort.

The creature nodded in satisfaction, "Adequate.'"

Sørian heaved the girl across the circle and into the creature's waiting arms. The creature embraced her paternally, as one might greet long parted niece or cousin. She woke with a start, screaming as the demon's flies burrowed beneath her skin, chewing their way to the bone. Howling as her flesh sloughed away, exposing the now rotting muscle beneath the serving girl struggled with her increasingly brittle limbs.

Hexathelida vomited on the floor in disgust, which only seemed to increase the creature's enjoyment of his meal. It was that knowledge, and that alone, that allowed Sørian to keep his own lunch down.

It was when the servant girl's now gangrenous muscle and rotting black bone turned as spongy and supple like fresh moss that the demon's jaw dislocated and he swallowed her slippery form in one squelching gulp. The piteous screams of the girl gurgled from the creature's perforated belly as his hellish digestives dissolved what was left of her into more filth to spill from its chest. It pooled within the confines of the protective magics, sloshing at the creature's ankles.

"I would know what I seek spirit," Sørian growled, eager to be rid of the creature, "Tell me of the Amon Sui's secrets. Tell me of Dex."

The demon smiled toothily and spoke in droll monotony, "The one you call Dex is protected from all forms of scrying and eavesdropping, either sorcerous or technological. He has been very skilled in protecting his stronghold. He has not, however, considered that the absolute absence of it is an obvious sign."

"Where is it?" Sørian licked his lips, "How can I find it."

"Look for a ship that isn't there," The demon laughed, "You'll find it where it is not."

"How in the sphincter of hell do we do that," Hexathelidae groused.

"I neither know, nor do I care mortal," The demon groaned in satisfaction as the liquid at his feet seeped up into his body and formed a series of angry boils along his legs and belly, "I will say no more on Dex."

"And of the Amon," Sørian probed, "Any more on them?"

"The Amon are more numerous and more powerful that you predict," the demon pulled a beetle from between his teeth and bit off its head, "Even now they prepare for their final strike."

"What is their final strike?" The death cultist cocked her head in confusion, "We're months from being able to enact our plan."

"Time is more fluid than you think," The demon chuckled, "It never moves as mortals plan. Plans adapt to conform."

"You didn't answer her question," Sørian continued in a conversational tone even as he realized with horror that the flies were flying to the barrier of the second circle. The bindings were not holding.

"Yes. I did," the creature laughed and took a step past the first protective circle, "But mortals never listen. They never ask the right questions. They questions they fear. The truths they do not understand."

Sørian pulled a glass jar from his belt and rubbed it between his hands, focusing an effort of will into it, "And what are the questions I ought to be asking?"

"What do I know about your missing God? Why has Tzeench offered his servants greater demonhood for your capture? Why can the demons ignore your barriers as though they weren't there?" The demon crossed the second barrier to emphasize his point, "Why can you summon us past a ship's wardings? Why do heralds and greater demons answer the summons of Nurglings and Horrors?"

"Enough spirit," Sørian growled in disgust and tossed the jar at the demon. It burst and covered the howling creature in golden dust, "Back to the shadow with you." The creature, undone by the ashes of a holy man and it's own promise to leave when ordered, dissolved into a puddle of rapidly evaporating ectoplasm and the smell of rot.

The two servants of tzeench stood together in the near dark of candle-light for ten minutes before either of them dared speak out loud. Sørian swore, "By the blood of the Gods... he allowed himself to be bound. He allowed himself to be banished. He pretended to be obeying the laws so that we would listen."

"What?" Hexathelida's confusion was understandable, demons were not motivated by altrusim, "Why could he possibly want to gain by it?"

"It's a power play... whatever I know... whatever Tzeench wants to know, Nurgle doesn't want him to know. They're ancient enemies after all. The balance of power between the Gods must depend upon it. That's why they're walking past my wardings... it's probably why we haven't been able to summon even a daemonette. The warp isn't placid... this is the eye of the storm," Sørian's eye's bugged out in horror, "What could I possibly know that is worth greater demonic conversion?"

"I do not know," Hexathelida cupped his groin in her hand and nuzzled up to his chest, seeking comfort in the closeness, "But your proposition of allying ourselves with the Inquisitor's interests seems more appealing by the moment."

* * *

In the aftermath of the battle it had been readily apparent that the Med bay simply didn't have the capacity to render aid to everyone who needed it, resulting in the sequestration of several blocks formerly devoted to the station's gambling establishments. The owners, all too aware of the imminent dip in tourism, had been all too eager to lend their facilities back to the station in exchange for considerations on their rental fees.

Michael hoped they'd replace the carpet before re-opening for business. The floor was stained with the blood of the wounded, messy red splotches highlighted by the discoloration around them where some hurried nurse had doused them with bleach before rushing to help another patient.

He ducked between white surgical sheets marked the barrier between one patients room and the next, the semi-translucent walls only partially protecting the modesty of their occupants and doing little to deaden the groaning din of a thousands of voices in pain. Doctors of all shapes, sizes and species wandered through the area of red sector cordoned off for triage and doing their best to sooth and heal the wounded bumping past him not bothering with greetings or platitudes. They were too busy to worry about such minor social niceties. Every medic, witch doctor, healer, and quack with a licensee to heal the sick who stepped on the station had been pressed into service.

Dr. Franklin stood in the center of the largest cluster of doctors and nurses, conductor to the seemingly never ending orchestra of suffering. The station's chief of medicine was in as bad of a state as Michael had ever seen him, wandering from cloth flap to cloth flap, barking orders to nurses, orderlies, and unfortunate family members drafted to be surgical aides. He was fighting a battle just as violent as the one that ended against the seemingly impossible task of staving off infection. Bleary eyed from lack of sleep and as sour tempered as a jackal, the doctor prowled his domain.

Michael probably didn't look much whole station was operating on a mix of fear and stimulants, no one daring to sleep for more than four hours at a time. How could they? Nobody, Sheridan included, had a good grasp of what had happened or how to avoid it in future. Everyone felt like they were balancing on egg shells, terrified to move and even more terrified to stay.

A security team had been dispatched to weld the doors to Kosh's chambers but Michael wasn't under any illusion that any precautions he took were anything other than a formality. If the Vorlon wanted to leave the could stroll by with impunity. That a murderer could wander his station with carte blanche made his blood boil. Had Michael not been called by Dr. Franklin he'd still be sitting sitting in his office, brooding and plotting a means to Kosh's arrest.

He wedged his way past a haggard nurse and tapped Dr. Franklin on the shoulder, recoiling as the doctor rounded him with a look of fury on his face second to none. Franklin opened his mouth as though to reprimand him then stopped, relaxing into a slightly less murderous expression, "I called you two hours ago."

"I know," Michael's placating tone grated, more sarcastic than was probably best for everyone's collective tempers, "We had a decompression issue in docking bay six, I got stuck in a transport tube till one of the repair teams could get me out."

Dr. Franklin swore and rifled through the pile of status updates on his desk, a three foot high stack of pages he obviously hadn't had the time to go through. He pulled out a missive a few sheets down, scattering a heap of pink and blue carbon copies in the process, "Was anyone injured? No... no thank God, just a few scrapes and bruises..."

"The repair teams are taking extra care Stephen, and they've got more hands working on this than they know what to do with," Michael patted the doctor's shoulder reassuringly, "Everyone on the station is working together to get the station back in working order."There was nothing quite like a shared near-death experience to bring people together.

"God help me Michael but I'm at the end of my rope. We're going to lose people Michael, we're going to lose them because I simply don't have enough medicine for them all. Even with my call for aid, even with the collective governments of the Non-Alligned Worlds scrambling to ship them to us, even with all the supplies we've taken from the fleet we do not have enough," Stephen sighed, "I need your help."

"Doc, I don't know if you've noticed but I'm not exactly a doctor, much less a miracle worker," Michael shook his head, "I'm not sure what I can do."

"It's not so much about what you can do as it is about who you know," Stephen rubbed his hands over a mess of stubble, caressing the dark bristles, "I need you to talk with your contacts about getting me more supplies."

"Stephen, it won't do any good," Michel sighed.

"People are dying Michael. I don't care if it's distasteful I need those supplies," Dr. Franklin swatted the stack of status reports, casting the multicolored sheets to the floor.

"It won't do any good," Michael repeated, "Because smugglers are afraid to come near the station. We haven't had any incoming traffic in two days that wasn't stopping for fuel or unable to redirect. It's been less than a week since a Vorlon ship got killed on our doorstep, nobody wants to be within lightyears of that."

"Damn," Stephen tugged at the back of his hair in frustration. The man agonized over every patient he lost, and he was loosing them by the hundreds, "Can one thing go right on this station just once today!"

"Sir," a nurse approached Dr. Franklin from behind, obviously dreading his sour mood, "They need you in the primary surgery. Miss Chen is ready for you to operate on her leg."

"Of course. I'll be there in a moment Nurse Faye," Stephen took the chart, shaking his head dejectedly as he flipped through the pages of her chart, "Yes we'll have remove the necrotic tissue. Have doctor Bertrand start the procedure. "

Not eager to hear the gory details Michael pointed his thumb over his shoulder and started backing away. Doctors never really seemed to have a good hang of what constituted _disgusting,_ "So I'll be heading out then."

"Not just quite Mr. Garibaldi," Stephen handed the chart back to the nurse, "I have something else I need you to do. Follow me please."

The Doctor ducked through the cloth barrier behind him, leading Michael past a heartbreaking assortment of pitiful figures in makeshift cots. Bandaged and beaten, the survivors of the battle stared at the passing duo with mixed levels of interest. Guilt swelled in his throat for not having been able to protect these people, _his_ people. They trusted him to keep them safe from harm and he'd failed entirely.

What, exactly, he could have done was beyond him but he damn well wouldn't be caught with his pants down around his ankles ever again. "Never again," he whispered to himself, "If I have to beat the secret out of the Imperials with my bare hands this will never happen on this station again."

"What was that?" Dr. Franklin turned around, half ducked beneath another sheet.

"Nothing," Michael cleared his throat, embarrassed to have his thoughts said out loud. Eager to change the subject he ducked under the sheet past the doctor, "So what is it that you need me for?"

The area of the makeshift triage they'd entered was a small corner of the casino usually used for exotic dance. A heavily bandaged man stood in front of a small raised stage with three long poles sat in the center of the room. In the center of the raised stage a Blonde woman stood, straining against the pole she'd been handcuffed to and screaming threats through a thick gag.

Zack Allan, half of his face covered with thick purple bruises looked away from the woman, smiled and waved in greeting, "Hey chief."

"Zack," Michael nodded back, "Do you want to explain exactly why you've chained Talia to a dancer's pole? "

"Because I told him to," Dr. Franklin stared at the woman in pity, "Michael... Talia isn't well. Whatever happened in that battle, it broke something in her." He nodded to Zack, "Show him."

"You sure about that Doc," Zack looked up at the bound woman nervously, "She nearly bit off my fingers the last time I had to put it back in."

"He needs to know," Stephen sighed, "I don't like seeing her his way either Zack. Just do it."

Zack approached her hesitantly, reaching behind her and untying her gag before pulling the wadded gauze roll out from between her teeth. The snarling woman spat a thick glob of phlegm into his eye, hissing in fury, "Let me go you useless blip. I'll see you all bleed for this you scum."

"Talia," Michael blinked in confusion, "Talia what's wrong."

"Talia is dead. Talia is weak," She crowed in ecstasy, "You don't know how long I sat in here, listening to her simper and moan just waiting for my time."

"That's enough," Dr. Franklin cut his hand across his throat and nodded to Zack. Officer Allan gladly shoved the gauze back into Talia's mouth and the doctor continued, "She's been like this since she woke up. She claims her name is "control" and demands to speak to her superior officer. She remembers everything but it's like she's a different person."

"Jesus," Michael swore, "She collided with the Inquisitor's anti-demon weapon in the hangar bay. Delenn called it a 'soul-stone.' Said it had some mystical ability to steal the soul of whoever touches it. "

"Is that possible," Zack looked at Talia in horror, "I mean... losing a soul?"

"We were just attacked by a demon and his horde of undead minions," Planning for _every_ eventuality was taking on a whole new meaning this month, "At this point I'm just taking everything at face value. I had a hazmat team put it into a radioactive materials locker just in case. It's under lock and key with the stations nuclear waste."

"Good," Stephen nodded in agreement, "Did she say anything about reversing it's effects?"

"She seemed more terrified that anyone would consider using one. I doubt she knows," Michael sighed and stared at Talia, "God Talia I am so sorry. We're going to help you. You don't want us to but we are going to get you through this."

Zack nodded supportively, "Of course we are Chief. Delenn must know something..."

"No," Garibaldi shivered with disgust as he realized the path before him, "No... we aren't going to see Delenn."

"But you just said."

"I know what I said," Michael turned to Dr. Franklin, "Come on we're talking Talia to the one person on this station I'm sure knows how to fix her. We're going to see Ambassador Kosh."

* * *

Susan's kidnapping would have been substantially easier to stomach had the Lady Sáclair been easier to dislike. Had the woman been cruel, or short tempered, or unreasonable, or any number of any equally unpleasant things Susan would have been able to just grab a gun and shoot her way out. However the Lady Sáclair was none of these. Vivacious and funny, the Lady was equal parts ruler and matriarch.

Susan had been trained to resist torture and avoid interrogations. Everyone broke eventually but she could be sure to make they work for what they took. She had not, however, been trained to resist the constant mothering of an extremely pregnant noblewoman insisting she have another helping of soup because "she really was much too thin." Kindness was potent weapon to which Susan lacked a prepared defense.

Susan had spent the past two days in the Lady Sáclair's decadently opulent household being educated in the art of acting like a lady in the imperial nobility. It was a job that involved substantially fewer curtseys and a great deal more concealed weapons that Susan expected. The lavish silk garment the Lady's servants brought to her, a flattering dress with more jewelery sewn into it than Susan had ever owned in her entire lifetime, was full of so many places for concealed weapons it was as much an armory as an evening dress. The Lady Sáclair had gone over every pocket in detail, suggesting the ideal weapon to spirit into each of them.

She hadn't wanted to wear the dress but there seemed no way to do it without offending the Lady Sáclair. It was befuddling to be simultaneously treated as prisoner and royalty. She'd been expecting torture and death, not caviar and pampering. Susan had _servants_, though slaves was probably the more accurate term for them. A girl of twenty, Tsubune Nebu Tus, who saw to her wardrobe and a boy of twelve, Ivan, who's job seemed to largely consist of declaring the titles of anyone who entered her room.

She'd tried to escape of course. Three attempts, each attempt ending more disastrous than the first. Each time she'd managed to get out the front doors the swarthy skinned Lionhearts brought her back in handcuffs, took her to her room and let her go. The Lady Sáclair found it highly amusing, telling her in passing as she forced yet another helping of stew upon her that the Lionhearts were betting on who would be the next one to bring her back.

It was several days gilded incarceration later that the Lady Sáclair presented her with a set of knives and a small but elaborately worked pistol, much to Susan's confusion. Especially so as the Lady Sáclair had chosen to forgo her usual cadre of Ogryn, "Why on earth are you arming me?"

"My dear Ivanova, we are in the warp. Simply put there isn't anywhere for you to escape _to_," The Lady smiled, "It could be days, even weeks before we get back to realspace."

"You aren't worried that I'll harm you or your family?" Susan picked up the pistol, feeling its weight. The weapon, one of the laser pistols favored by the Empire, was heavier than her PPG had been. It felt wrong in her hand.

"When home was only a heartbeat away? Possibly," The Lady Sáclair rolled her eyes a glibly imperious gesture of maternity, rubbing the elaborate golden lion over her belly, "But you aren't dumb enough to think you can fight your way past the entire crew, all of whom would kill you for looking at me crossly."

"That's a hell of a gamble," Susan pocketed the pistol in her dress. It did, in fact, fit perfectly in the pouch under the fur ruff.

"I'm a month from delivery, irrational leaps of faith are entirely within my perrogative." The Lady laughed as she sashayed out of the room, the skin tight fabric of her tunic clinging to her curves invitingly, "Speaking of my children I'm in need of your talents."

"My talents?"

"You are a psychic are you not?" Susan blushed crimson. There was something deeply unnerving about having her deepest secret stated so openly. The Lady Sáclair was matter of fact about it, her only interests in it practical ones, however she couldn't help but feel a shudder of fear at other people knowing her unspoken shame.

"I'm... I'm barely a P1," Susan gulped, following the Lady Sáclair down the corridor and up a stairwell "I get flashes... sometimes bursts of emotion."

"Perfect, you'll have a step up from me," the Lady Sáclair stopped in front of a bright yellow door with 'Ami's room' painted on it in careful gothic calligraphy, "I can never even begin to figure out what this girl is thinking."

Susan eyed the pile of obviously untouched food trays in front of the door with a quizzical eye, "How long has it been since she's eaten?"

"I couldn't say. She has a personal icebox in her quarters, though none of the food in there is fit for a growing girl to eat in excess. Sweets and the like," The lady Sáclair pulled back her veil, looking exhausted, "She's refusing to talk to anyone. She went absolutely mental when Preston, who changed her swaddling clothes mind you, woke her from a nightmare. Tossed things at him till he left. Screaming not to touch her."

"It was when she refused to let Danzig into the room that I knew something was really seriously wrong," the Lady Sáclair sighed, "She loves him like an uncle. She won't tell me anything other than 'everything is ok', which is a teenage code word for "the world is ending."

"And you want me to talk to her," There was no way she was going to be able to turn this down, even if she'd wanted to. To hell with it, apparently this would be her mitzvah for the year.

"It is that or I have to bring in a Medicus who will declare her to be hysterical and have her sedated." The Lady Sáclair spat the word 'hysterical', clearly disgusted at the very thought of it.

"Yeah," Susan snarled at the sheer chauvinism, "I'll talk to her."

"Good," The Lady Sáclair pressed a button on the wall, opening the door.

A single figure on the four poster bed in the center of the room had enough time to screech a disgusted "Moooom" before the Lady Sáclair all but tossed Susan into the room, shouting "I have someone for you to meet dear," over Susan's confused, "Woah...Wait a second!"

The door shut with a noise that sounded suspiciously like a lock fixing into place as a furious teenage girl leapt off the bed and started jabbing Susan in the chest. Her bony digit prodded the jewlery of her dress, poking her with the sharp pins of the various golden ornaments, "Who in the Eye are you?"

"If you poke me one more time I will be the woman breaking your finger," Susan batted the girl's hand away, "But my name is Susan Ivanova."

The girl gaped at her in astonishment, "You're the Inquisitor's apprentice. The one from the Alliance."

"I'm the Inquisitor's prisoner," Susan corrected.

The girl cocked her head in confusion, "But I thought you'd been entered into the ship's logs as his apprentice."

"He kidnapped me," Susan massaged her arms, remembering the broken bones, "Brutalized me, shamed me, and harmed my friends. But yes, for some reason both he and your mother are convinced I'm going to become his apprentice."

"That... that makes no sense at all," Ami shook her head.

"Trust me I've been trying to convince your mother of that for days now," Susan sat down in an overstuffed chair next to Ami's bed, idly picking up a copy of Troubled Crossroads: A tale of the Manchurian Crusade. The book's gaudy cover promised tales of the fabled Sable Swords chapter of the Adeptus Astates, whoever the heck they were, "No sense at all."

"No I mean turning it down," Ami sat down on the bed, "You do realize what an Inquisitor is right? What they do? The opportunity he gave you?"

Susan massaged her temples, trying to massage the tick out of her forehead. After everything she'd been through the thought of just winging the snot nosed brat with a bit of laser fire for actually having the audacity to suggest she should be grateful. But she bit it down, gathering some intelligence couldn't hurt, "Ok Ami. Why?"

"Miss Ivanova... it's one of the highest positions of authority in the Imperial government. They're basically royalty," Ami shook her head at Susan's incredulous expression, "No seriously, an Inquisitor is given all sorts of stuff. Armies, private estates, some of them rule star systems. Pretty much anything you could ever want."

"The world has gone insane," Susan waved her arms in disgust, "I've been kidnapped and made into a noble by a race of nutjobs."

"It's not all bad," Ami balled her skirts in her hands, "I mean we're not all bad."

Susan gritted her teeth, realizing her gaff, "Ami, your mother is very worried about you. Worried enough that she'd asking her...guest... prisoner... whatever I am... to talk to you."

"Why you?" Ami squinted in confusion, "A servant I get, my sisters I get, but... this is just weird."

"I'm a psychic," the words hit the Ami like a ton of bricks, filling her eyes with tears as she started blubbering out of control.

The little girl buried her head in the pillows and started screaming, "It's not my fault."

Groaning in disgust, Susan realized why the girl's mother had wanted her to be the one to talk to her daughter. Given the apparent presumptions of psychic might associated with an Inquisitor, as well as their absence of psychic privacy laws, the girl assumed that Susan already knew her secret. She rubbed the girl's shoulder comfortingly, "Honey, it's ok. It's ok. Let it all out."

Ami looked up at Susan with her tearstreaked face and hiccupped, "I didn't know it would happen. I didn't want it to happen."

"Ok," Susan wiped the girl's face with the sleeve of her dress, "Lets start from the top. What happened."

"I... I was looking for clues about the man murdering teenage girls in the Belzafest sector," Ami hugged herself not daring to make eye contact with Susan, "I wore a disguise to sneak into the space security cordoned off."

"You snuck into an active crime scene by _yourself_ trying to find a serial killer," Susan couldn't keep the bemusement out of her voice, "I assume your mother told you not to, which is why you aren't telling her."

Ami nodded, another tittering sob coming out, "It was stupid, I _know_. But I couldn't do _nothing_ I'm good at things! I can help."

"Ami, I wouldn't go by myself to a dangerous crime scene and I'm a professional soldier. There's being brave and there's being stupid," Ami's face fell, "It's the truth. That was stupid."

"Yeah," Ami shuddered, "I know that now."

Susan recongized the tone, knowing all too well where Ami's story was heading to a dark place, "What happened next?"

"He was there," the pronoun rolled off her tongue like a vile swear, like the last bit of bile in your throat, "He found me... he wanted to... It wasn't ok. I didn't want to." Susan just listened, not daring to interrupt her.

"I pretended to be interested, let him get in close, and kicked him in where it hurts," Susan couldn't help herself, she snorted with laughter. Ami laughed with her for a good three minutes. They laughed so hard it hurt, "Yeah... But it wasn't enough. I wasn't fast enough. He caught me."

"Oh sweetheart," Susan's heart broke for the girl. She brushed the hair out of Ami's eyes, patting the firearm beneath her dress with deliberate intent. Considering the old testament style justice the Empire seemed to favor she might actually get to shoot the bastard, "Who was he? Where is he?"

"Dead... he's dead..." She crawled into a ball on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest. The girl hesitated, emanating the slightest of shuddering psychic impressions. It must have been an overwhelming feeling for Susan to have sensed it.

Ami didn't want to talk about how he'd died. Nor was Susan inclined to force the matter. She muttered inaudibly, "Good. It saves me the trouble of killing the bastard."

Ami bit her lip, "Are... are you going to tell my mom?"

"That you had to kill a man who assaulted you in a dark alley in self defense and feel guilty about it? Yes, I have to. But it's up to you how much or little you chose to share with her," Susan hugged the girl comfortingly, a gesture she wasn't generally comfortable with, "But you need to share with someone you trust. And for god's sake eat a meal."

"Ok," Ami smiled, "It's a shame you don't want to be an Inquisitor."

"Why?"

"I don't think there are a whole lot of nice ones," The girl sniffled, resting her head on her knees, "You're nice... even if you are a bit blunt."

"I'm not blunt. I'm Russian," Susan shrugged, "We're just more practical about these things."

"What's Russia?" The girl crossed her legs, "Is that your planet?"

"Well... its certainly a world apart, but no it's on Earth..." She stopped mid sentence as a chill ran up her spine, vague tendrils of psychic familiarity echoing through her mind. The overwhelming sense that a predator was stalking her hummed in the back of her mind as she reached in to her dress for the pistol, all too cognizant of its meaning.

The yellow door swung inward, unveiling the nightmare beyond. Hobbling forward with the aid of a long ebony cane, Inquisitor Daul entered the room. Terrifying fluttering skulls hovered around him, their tiny tendril mounted surgical tools and complex instruments dangling from glowing antigravity harnesses. His face was one giant purplish discoloration, giving his already tired face the distinct impression of purification.

Heedless of the danger Susan pulled out her pistol and fired, clicking the trigger several times before realizing that nothing was happening, "Oh no..."

"Oh honestly," the Inquisitor beaconed with a single finger, tearing the gun from her grip and summoning it in a single fluid motion. He examined the firearm idly, turning it to its side and tapping one of the gems, "You need to disable the safety first." He depressed the jewel and brandished the firearm, "Like this."

"I'll try to remember that for next time," Susan's eyes flitted around the room, searching for an escape, a weapon, anything really, "What are you going to do now?"

"Nothing, if you mean what am I going to do _to_ you. We are going to walk to the Captain's library and have a conversation like _civilized_ adults," The implication that Susan had somehow betrayed the Inquisitor's hospitality was not lost on her. Susan considered the merits of stabbing him in his fat hypocritical face like the condescending bastard deserved, a wildly impractical if greatly satisfying fantasy.

"And if I refuse?" She wasn't about to make this easy for the self entitled jerk, "You strip me naked, break every bone in my body and parade me past everyone I know? Oh wait, you already did that!"

"Miss Ivanova, perhaps these matters are best discussed elsewhere," He gave a significant look at Ami, "Away from the impressionable and obviously terrified?"

Susan swallowed guiltily. Ami, who only moments ago had been bursting with curiosity about Susan's homeland, had balled herself into a ball and hidden beneath the covers. An entirely reasonable reaction to someone trying to start a gunfight in your bedroom. Oye vey, the last thing that girl needed was to lose her safe place in her own house, "Ok, I'll come with you. But it isn't for you understand."

"Miss Ivanova if you had been anything other than your stubborn self I would have been greatly disappointed," The Inquisitor cracked a smile, "Now, if you please." So it was that Susan found herself being led at gunpoint to the Captain's library, only a yard from the most evil man she had ever known.

* * *

David arrived with his package at the appointed time, taking special care not to drop it or disturb the contents for fear that they might be as dangerous as the man he delivered them to. He walked in to fight deck D-225 and found hangar R-2, a nondescript place short range transports sat in storage. Most of them were either outdated transports replaced long ago and kept for parts or the disused transports of layabout nobles too disinterested with life outside the ship to see to their hereditary transports.

At the end of the row behind a boxy Rodan make transport under a thick tarp was a sleek ship strategically covered in grease and spare parts to give the illusion of disuse. The sleek engines of a mark-3 Kor interceptor were welded to the body of a ZV series six transport, rounded bulky nose sporting what looked suspiciously like retractable gun ports he was positive did not come on the standard model.

No special effort seemed to have been made to either conceal the transport or prevent entry, the door to its cargo hold yawed open without needing identification. David crossed the threshold, taking care not to present himself as too open of a target. Stenatoda was fond of clubbing him from behind when he made deliveries, her hatred of his father vented upon him by proxy.

His caution proved excessive, the cargo bay was entirely bereft of crew or cargo. A few confused moments of further examination of the ship revealed signs of habituation but no inhabitants. Discarded playing cards, a still smoking cigar in the ash tray of the necessary, and even the still warm cup of tea abandoned in the cockpit with the remnants of toasted bread all indicated someone was supposed to be in the ship.

It was alarming, Dex had never given David a delivery date or location that hadn't had someone to pick up the package, apparently mistrusting dead drops. If Dex's intended recipient had yet to arrive it meant that something had gone wrong, which in the case of Amon Sui mutiny might mean his own undoing. Fearful that Osma's enforcers might drop in at any moment David stowed the package in his rucksack and made a beeline for the door.

Stuttering to a stop as the sheer wall of the cargo bay receded, David jerked in astonishment as Dex poked his head into view. The saboteur looked at his chronometer in astonishment, blinking in surprise. He tapped it twice, shaking it next to his ear before sighing in disgust, "Damned magnets botched the internals."

"Sir," David probed, unsure what to call Dex. The Amon Sui were impossibly strict with their titles, "I have your package."

"I'm sure ye do boy," He waved in to the concealed compartment with an oil-stained rag, idly pocketing his broken chronometer in the pocket of his velvet jacket beneath his thick smock, "Put it on the yellow table next to my tools."

The cramped workshop housed within the secret compartment of an otherwise nondescript cargo ship was not exactly the base of operations that David would have expected from Dex. Immaculately clean and uncluttered it was more reminiscent of an operating room in a surgery than the lair of a dangerous and unrepentant techo-heretic. Tools of all descriptions lined the walls, hanging from pegs and marked by an outline of each tool drawn in permanent marker. A place for everything and everything was in its place.

Dex flopped down into a well worn looking chair, pushing snub faced and wheezing dog to the ground with a mild reproof, "This be' my chair boy. Not for doggies." He continued to wipe the grease from his fingers and stared at David intently, "Stenatoda told me that you're causing her a whole mess of trouble, that you're unruly and unusable."

David bristled at the comment, his thoughts straying to the pistol he'd stowed in his rucksack as he slammed the package on the table next to the tool box, "I am not!"

"Says the boy who just smashed a box of pressure trigger grenades on the table," Dex's voice hitched in horror.

"I... but... what..." David gulped, staring at the indentations in the package his fingers made.

Just as David was contemplating if it was more economical to use his last moments fleeing for his life or making his peace with the Emperor, Dex burst into uproarious laughter. He laughed till he had to wipe tears of mirth from his eyes.

"Lad. Stenatoday is a complete hag. If she'd liked you I'd worry. If she suspected you of betraying us you'd be dead. Consider yourself employed by the Amon Sui. You just manhandled some tools used for engine repair. Not delicate and most certainly not explosive," Dex reached into a metal pail on his shelf and tossed a foil wrapped package to David, "Relax boy."

On reflex David caught the package, opening it to discover a pocket of flatbread filled with savory meat and cheeses. Unsure what he was supposed to do with it, he sat on the stool of the work bench. Dex's flat-faced dog woofed hopefully at David's flatbread, hoping for something to drop.

Dex sighed and pulled another pocket out of the bucket, "Lad it works better if you put it in your mouth and chew."

David tentatively took a bite and swallowed, surprised by the meat's leanness, "This isn't grox."

"Nay, it's one of the devil birds they imported. Ostriches or whatever they're called. Vile creatures but they taste a damn sight better than they look," He snorted, "Some damned fools are actually trying to ride the psychotic things, getting hurt good and proper for their stupidity too."

"Riding them?" David couldn't imagine looking at the oblong figured angry creatures and thinking that mounting them was anything other than a fools errand. Then he was hardly one to make judgement calls on fools, "How would you do that?"

"They've made these saddles they're trying to fit the birds with. It aint bein' especially well received I assure you. Ye' canna believe how damned funny it is," Dex sighed, "But that isn't why I brung' you here."

"Why am I here?"

"Ta listen boy," He smiled sadly and rain his fingers through his thick beard, stroking the chin of his dog absentmindedly. It's leg scratched the floor rhythmically in satisfaction, "You've heard half a story. It has to have been... by the saints boy has it been fifteen years? Aye it has. Fifteen years and you've been only given half stories and platitudes about what has happened."

"And you're going to tell me the whole truth?" David's sarcasm slipped past his teeth before he could consider the danger in mouthing off.

"Lad, truth is _all_ I do," Dex crossed his arms across his wide chest, "Have I lied to you about anything yet boy? Told you any half truths? Hell have I ever not answered a question you've asked?"

Much to David's frustration nothing came to mind, "I suppose that's true so far..."

Dex slapped him on his knee with bone jarring joviality, "Of course it is lad. Old Dex is a teller of truth. Now you're going to sit back and listen to Dex's story, and you're going to listen. Now Dex is a traitor you say? A saboteur? Nay lad. Dex is a patriot. You only know the Amon Sui as bogeymen, the devils who haunt you and your family. But it were not always so."

He chewed pensively, apparently considering where to start David's education, "I started me path to the Amon as a boy not much younger than you are. I started tinkering. Machines interested me, and though I caught the eye of the Enginseers, who allowed me to observe them in the machine shops in exchange for completing errands. They thought it harmless, I was too young and uneducated for them to worry I would learn their secrets. But learn I did."

He paused dramatically, clearly deeply satisfied to have outsmarted the Tech-priests, "After a while I stopped just learning. I realized that with some slight differences I could not just do the same repairs as the tech priests, I was better. With my bare hands and some tools I could fix machines they condemned to the scrap heap."

He held up his hands, examining the fingers fondly, "It were as though I had found my calling in life. I showed the priests what I'd learned, hoping for praise, only to receive their disgust. They called me heretic, arrested me, gave me to the Amon Sui representative visiting the colony and demanded my extradition to a Ad-mech world to await execution."

"You look surprisingly healthy for a dead man," David said through a mouthful of ostrich.

"Aye, I do at that," The technopagan snorted, "Nay he did not kill me. He protected me, gave me a job, gave me a purpose. For years I discovered and re-discovered Dark Age technologies, replicating what I could not invent through the use of xenotech. Lad, I saved lives, I improved the quality of life on dozens of worlds and ships, including the _Endless Bounty_. If doing that makes me a heretic then I'm damned proud to be one no matter what your father says to the contrary."

"I notice you not mentioning all the people you killed. How you tried to sacrifice my father to achieve your goals," David's blood boiled, "How your group tried to murder me in my sleep."

"After your father turned us in for a sin that was his lad. You'll pardon us for being a bit miffed that he'd gone and had anyone in the entire bleeding nation slapped with a death sentence because he couldn't manage to smuggle a single parcel of grain five systems without tipping off an Imperial patrol," He sighed, "They tossed your father under so that billions, trillions of well meaning men like me could avoid persecution for our beliefs."

"Beliefs like the coven of Skova?" Dex flinched at the name, caught off guard. David tossed the foil to the ground and crossed his arms, "I saw the pict slates Inquisitor Hilder left in my father's care. They still give me nightmares. Men, women, and children were all sacrificed to feed the hunger of the dark beast in belly of the Amon Sui flagship. All done for boons of power."

"I seem to recall a couple hundred xenos relaxing in the relative comfort of the Endless Bounty after the last battle, do I not? Perhaps ye' recall the bleeding planet full of people, the Belzafesters, who the Inquisitor was willing to slaughter to capture a single man," Dex pulled a clay pipe out from a pocket and began to pack it with a thick wad of mixed talbac and spices, "But you're right, they were wrong to do that."

He lit the talbac and inhaled deeply, thin trails of smoke whispering their way out the edge of his lips, "They were also forced into it."

"Forced into it," David repeated incredulously, "The Inquisitor suggested that the Amon Sui had been making use of cultist groups for centuries, perhaps longer."

"Lad, exactly how many of your father's conversations have you been privy to?" Dex puffed on his pipe in amusement, "I can't see Hilder exactly wanting a strapping lad like you knowing more than you ought to."

The Inquisitor hadn't even remotely wanted it, nor had his father, however when a Sáclair got it into their head to do a deed there wasn't anything on heaven or earth to stop them. There was an old, disused servant's entrance to the room behind a book shelf. It was from there that he'd eves dropped on a number of the Inquisitor's conversations with his father, "Not... not that many... well not that many before they caught me."

Dex pulled out his pipe and waved it in a lazy circle, prompting him to continue. David sighed, "It was after my father came back from prison. I was thirteen and it had been so long since I'd seen him that I couldn't remember what he looked like. I just wanted to... I don't know... understand why he'd left, what he'd done to deserve the disgrace. I snuck into his papers, learned all that I could stomach. It.. it didn't make a lot of sense to me," he rubbed his right elbow in reflexive pain at the memory, "The Inquisitor's man caught me doing it... the Skitarii... he switched me ragged then brought me to the Inquisitor... who sat me down and forced me to look at the pictures of the massacres... the chaos massacres. He looked at me with those dead eyes of his and said, 'there are things boys should not seek out. There are things no man should know.' Then he let me go. I never eavesdropped again... It... he scared me... he still does."

"He's supposed to kill someone who does that you know. Children... Hilder has a special fondness for children," Dex sighed, "Evil men try to find a way to make themselves feel morally justified for the things they do. I suppose sparing you was his way of being able to sleep at night."

He stood up and clapped David's side paternally, "I understand your need to learn lad. I feel the same way. It's why I do what I do. It's why I fight the Inquisitor. I want the right to learn without fear."

A fit of melancholy overtook him and he lifted the dog into his arms, snuggling the great lumbering beast against his beard, "Lad there are greater and lesser levels of evil, even with respect to Chaos. Aye there are horrible monstrous beasts who serve chaos, but there are monsters who claim the Emperor as their savior as well. Did the Amon Sui use sorceries banned by the dogma of the Eccelsiarchy? Aye, but they did not turn to blood sacrifice and true horrors till the Inquisitor launched the first attack on them. He brought the fragging Space Marines to attack and subdue entire settlements, razing habitats with hundreds of thousands of innocents. What were we to do? We defended ourselves."

"Better to die," David hissed, disgusted at the thought of turning to the demon gods, "Far better than to fall."

"Aye?" Dex smiled a sad half smile, "And shall I be stopping with the serum for your lady love then?"

"That's... that's different!" David had endured enough of the heretic's double talk. It was time to tell him what-for, "I am saving her life."

"And the sacrifices to the Beast of Skova were to appease the will of a warp beast dwelling in the space between worlds. It attacked the Inquisitor's fleet, scattering it and giving the Amon Sui fleet time to recover and regroup elsewhere," Dex sighed and deposited his dog back in the chair, "Lad, no man is the villain of his own story. I have no doubt that Horus himself truly believed it was the best thing for the universe to usurp the Emperor and take control."

David's mouth hung slack in horror at the perverse suggestion. It was ludicrous to the point of impossible but the man said it as though it were the most positively ordinary thing to say. Men had been hung on gibbets for suggesting less heretical things... but then Dex had no fear of being branded a heretic. He reveled in his heresy.

Dex pressed three vials of pale liquid into David's hands, cupping them with his own, "Lad, you don't need to believe me. You don't need to believe in my cause. I don' expect you to and I don' need you to. But when the time comes I need you to remember that this was your choice, just like it was the choice for the Amon Sui to sacrifice themselves, just like it was your father's choice to trade with the xenos, and just like it was the Inquisitor's choice to seek the aid of xenos."

"Like I chose to accept your offer... chose to inject Bona with the serum," David hesistated. The click of glass vial on glass vial punctuated the silence, stressing the avoided truth, "I am a heretic too aren't I."

"Aye lad," Dex puffed his pipe, "And we all pay for our choices. One way or another."

* * *

Zack strained to see through the reflections on his visor. Hazy clouds of semi translucent noxious gasses swirled around the corridors of the so called "Alien Sector" bursting with every footstep he took. Miss Winters, bound and sedated, muttered insults in her sleep as Zack and Michael hefted her between them. Fragmented mutters of "get you," "fool," and "obey" worked their way past her mask in a distinctly less than congratulatory manner.

The small section of apartments between Red and Green sectors catered to the living needs of non-oxygen breathing races, though few enough of those remained. Inconvenient though wearing an encounter suit was, none of them were in any hurry to live too close to what was now referred to as the "Vorlon Quarantine." Other than a contingent of heavily armed and armored Marines, armed with weapons generally banned on B5 for their tendency to breach the hull of ships, there wasn't a soul within a hundred yards of the Ambassador's apartment.

A small repulsion platform carried a hazardous materials container, hovering ten paces behind them at all times. More than once he'd leapt in horror as the rim of the device bumped the back of his knees. Marines, concealed by the smoke and their own barricades, yelled confirmation signs out of seemingly nowhere, only revealing themselves once Garibaldi successfully replied with the password.

He wasn't sure what the Chief hoped to accomplish by going to the Vorlon but the Chief had never led him wrong so far. He wasn't about to start doubting him now, even if he really, _really_ wanted to. Complaining however, was another matter entirely, "Chief this is... just... creepy."

"Don't I know it," Garibaldi's voice crackled through the speaker on his mask, distorted and elongated, "But we don't have a choice."

"Why the Vorlon Chief? Kosh hasn't exactly been in a 'sharing mood' lately," Zack managed not to jump out of his own skin when a Marine appeared out of the mist from his hiding place , but just barely. Was there actually any point in doing that? The Vorlons _must_ have been able to see through the mist. They were freaking telepaths.

"He's going to give me what I'm asking for," Garibaldi swiped his ID chip past the outer pressure doors of the Vorlon's apartment, "Because I'm going to ask nicely."

Well, the plan certainly had the benefit of simplicity. However, in Zack's opinion, however inexpert it may have been, there seemed to be certain flaws therein. Specifically being totally nuts, "And if that doesn't work?"

"I end him," There was something truly terrifying in the way Garibaldi stated it. There was no hesitation, no doubt, no consideration for the consequences, "I figure he's worn out his welcome."

"Chief," Zack wasn't sure what scared him more, the prospect of threatening to kill a Vorlon or the consequences of not being able to follow through, "You do have a plan right?"

Garibaldi waggled his eyebrows and entered the Vorlon's chambers, "What can I say. I'm a wascly wabbit."

"He's completely insane," Zack muttered to Talia under his breath, "I can't tell who's gone more bonkers, him or you... or me for going with you... we're all freaking insane."

Having never been in the Vorlon's chambers before Zack couldn't say what they looked like before, but it seemed deeply unlikely that the shattered glass and torn curtains had always been part of the décor. Anything with a reflective surface had been shattered into tiny pieces and thrown to the ground where in lay in multifaceted spirals of regret. Deep gouges were torn intermittently into in the walls, presumably where the Vorlon Ambassador had lashed out telepathically. A shattered room for a shattered man.

The Ambassador himself hovered listlessly in front of a holographic display of ISN. The dour faced Newscaster sat in front of a picture of the Ambassador's glowing eye, before the image switched to a series of shaky image stills of the battle. Confusing pictures of zombies, demons, and the Vorlon fighting security other painted a nightmarish picture of the Vorlon. The two minute report finished, then started from the beginning, showing the whole terrible thing over again.

God only knew how long the Vorlon had been sitting here, watching it on a loop.

"Ambassador Kosh," Garibaldi pulled out his side arm, a more powerful version of the PPG generally issued to station security. He approached the Ambassador slowly, taking care to not step on a protruding shard of glass, "Ambassador Kosh I need to speak with you."

"They cannot see," The Ambassador moaned despondently.

"Ambassador," Garbaldi was in no mood for the creature's self pity, "Now."

The Vorlon swiveled its head to face Garibaldi, observing him with its single eye, "The Circle. It was for the Circle."

"Ambassador I'm not here to discuss your crimes," Garibaldi backed up two paces, covering the alien with his firearm.

"Crimes!" Screeched the Vorlon. It's shimmering cloak billowed round it fluttering with incandescent plumes of psychic lightning.

"Ambassador, right now I am here to talk," Garbaldi pulled a remote detonator from his pocket and held it into the air, "If I start thinking you don't want to play nice any more I press the red button and 'boom' this section of the station goes into space. It probably won't kill you but captian Xingjang was surprisingly agreeable to the idea of blowing the excised section to little bits with laser fire. I figure a weapon capable of killing a ship should be able to kill you."

"You killed people Ambassador. Without provocation," Zack was astonished to discover that it was, in fact, himself speaking to the agitated Vorlon in this manner. And even more astonished when he followed it up with, "So yeah. Crimes."

"Protection," Hissed Kosh, his eye focused on the metal box in Garibaldi's hand, "Those who consort with the third are destroyed utterly. Men and ships alike. It is law. None of the third, no danger."

"Protection... what are you," Garibaldi lowered his pistol, "You didn't tell the fleet to come."

A pregnant moment passed before the Ambassador seemed to deflate, his cloaks ceasing their psychically enhanced motion, "No."

"I don't get it," Zack eased Talia into one of the few remaining pieces of furniture in the room, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"I'll explain it later Zack," Garibaldi groaned, his face scrunched in thought "Damn. This complicates... damn. You actually though you were saving us... they were going to destroy the station."

"A man who sees with both eyes is also blind," The Vorlon trilled morosely, eyeing the Chief, "If he does not look."

"Then perhaps you can look at something for me," Garibaldi waved towards the hovering canister, clearly intending for Zack to open it. Feeling distinctly like the rough nomex gloves were not even close to sufficient protection for what he was about to do, Zack reached into the container and pulled out the egg sized gem. The swirling black mist in the crystal undulated and crackled with some dark and sinister power, intoxicating in it's disgusting beauty.

The Vorlon made a sound like boiling water whistling from the kettle, furious and confused, "How?"

The Chief scratched the back of his neck, "The Inquisitor had a trap set up for the demon. Said he was going to trap it in the stone."

"It would not have worked," The Vorlon chided matter-of-factly.

"He assured us it would."

"Fool," Kosh growled, clearly unimpressed with Hilder's assessment, "She stepped in."

"Yes," Zack affirmed, staring at Talia, "Can you make her the way she was?"

Kosh sighed.

Garibaldi sighed, "Can you do it?"

The Vorlon considered it, "No."

"Care to repeat that?" Garibaldi's voice was a deadly calm, a broiling storm beneath still waters. For a second Zack feared he would detonate the explosives on principal.

"The Animus can not be unmade once forged, only harnessed." The stone lifted from Zack's hands where it hovered in the air, "Two souls cannot live in one body."

"Hold up," Zack swallowed, "Are you telling me that the reason you can't put Talia back to normal is because there is a soul already in her body?" It was just... too... weird to even contemplate, "How does that happen?"

"A fragment remains. Twisted, evil. It has claimed her," the glass fragments from the floor collected around the crystal, melting and molding into each other as the Vorlon manipulated them into a glass bracelet, into which he set the stone, "The fragment must be excised."

"Will it... harm her?" Garibaldi relaxed the arm carrying his pistol.

"The fragment must be excised," the Vorlon repeated, though the implication that it would indeed hurt very badly hung in the air.

"Do it," Garibaldi nodded.

The bracelet elongated and reformed, snaking its way around Talia winter's neck, shimmering and metamorphosing into a choker, the oblong stone nestled in the nape of the Telepath's neck. With a shifting of servos the Vorlon's eye narrowed and a thin beam of blue light shot from his eye into the stone, agitating the black smoke. Multicolored bursts of lighting shot from the stone into Miss Winter's body, waking her from her drug induced stupor.

With an unholy screech of, "No!" she stood up and tried to flee, only to fall back into the chair when a shard of glass sliced her exposed ankle. Her body spasmed erratically, every muscle contorting and contracting in resistance to soul-stone's power. Billowing green jets of smoke hissed from the pores in her skin, collecting into a ball of telekinetic lightning where they dissolved into oblivion.

After what felt like days but likely was only seconds she collapsed, breathing easily behind her mask. The Vorlon nodded once and looked at Garibaldi, "It is done."

"Ok," Zack reached for the soul-stone, "I'll just get rid of this..."

"No," The Vorlon rapped his knuckles with telekinetic whip, "Do not. What has been done cannot be undone. What you see before you is only the meat. The soul is forever bound."

"She has to wear the soul stone... forever," Garibaldi sighed sympathetically, "She is not going to like that.

"What happens if she looses the necklace?" Zack made a disgusted face, trying not to linger too much on the thought of Talia just being 'meat' in the Vorlon's estimation.

"The soul is bound to the stone, not the flesh," Kosh turned away from Talia and looked back to his holographic display, "We are finished."

"Kosh," Garibaldi closed his eyes as though tasting something foul, "Thank you."

The Vorlon said nothing, as was his custom.

Closing his eyes and sighing deeply, Garibaldi lifted Talia into a side carry, "Come on Zack. Let's get her back to the Doc. I want to check and see if anyone's found Susan before I get some shut eye."

A hazy film seemed to cover Zack's eyes as he felt himself speaking words that were no his, but he somehow knew to be true. He didn't remember where the inclination came from, or why it came, but he spoke them all the same, "I just saw her a minute ago Chief! I'm sure she's just walking around the Zoccalo."

Garibaldi shot him a furious glare, "That's not funny Zack. Susan is your friend too."

In spite of trying to articulate his apology for having said something so clearly offensive, he was sleep deprived and obviously not thinking properly, the warm film went over his eye again and his lips moved without consulting him, "I just saw her a minute ago Chief! I'm sure she's just walking around the Zoccalo."

"Zack..." Garibaldi's face took on a look of genuine concern, "What's wrong with you man."

"I just saw her a minute ago Chief! I'm sure she's just walking around the Zoccalo." Zack struggled to fight the film away from his eyes, clawing at his face as the words came out again and again, " I just saw her... I just saw her... I just saw her... I just saw her."

"No," The Vorlon replied from the other side of the room, "But you believe."

"Oh... son of a Bitch!" Garibaldi carried Talia towards the exit, rushing to some thing though Zack was at a complete loss as to why.

"Sir. I just saw her."

* * *

Sáclair watched in amusement as the plasma turrets in the ceiling of the great hall swayed back and forth in time with Tuul's incessant strides along the narrow length of marble hovering three yards from the great throne, his furious motions conveying the anger and betrayal his monotone drone could not, "I will do no such thing."

Zorn Calven sneered across the gap, a perversely giddy expression across his face as he snorted a generous pinch out of his snuff box into one of his pronounced nostrils. His milky third eye swiveled with amusement as he chuckled in reply, "Yes you will Magos adept Tuul. The navigators have deemed it necessary."

"It is madness! My knowledge of how warp propulsion functions isn't anywhere near sophisticated enough for me to consider modifying an existing design without the supervision of a high Magos, let alone activate a dark age piece of archeotech which we presume to be an alternate faster than light drive," The Magos rubbed his augmentic hand over the stubble of his recently shaved scalp, "It is madness to do it."

"The Navigators disagree," Sáclair reclined in his throne, savoring Tuul's discomfort. He'd been greatly displeased that Danzig had marooned rather than murdered the Magos, but considering Tuul's substantial authority over the Enginseers of the _Endless Bounty_ it was likely for the best. He needed Tuul, but for now it was best to keep the Machine Priest in his place, "As do I."

"My lord Sáclair... this is insane..." Tull trailed off, cowed by the hateful look on Sáclair's face, "The Inquisitor cannot possibly..."

"This is none of his affair," Sáclair smashed his fist on the arm of his throne, accidentally activating the ship wide vox cast, unintentionally broadcasting his shout of "I am to be obeyed" shipwide over the loudspeaker. The cacophonous bellow had the desired effect, even Zorn Calven flinched in fear at his rage. He deactivated the speakers and continued, "I trust I do not need to repeat myself?"

"Do not make me do this sir," Tuul said in a barely audible whisper, "It is a violation of the code of the Omnissiah... this will not end well."

"Tuul I tolerated the eccentricities of your mistress out of respect for her talents," Sáclair growled, "I am not _making_ you do anything. You are welcome to participate or not participate as you will. But the Enginseers _will_ be activating the system while we are en-route to the rendezvous."

Tuul did not have a chance to reply as his marble plinth descended to the ground, commanded by an idle whim of Sáclair's mind. He was the master of his ship, Sáclair and no other. If Sáclair said that he wanted a system activated then what business was it of Tuuls to disagree with him. Tuul was an insignificant ant scurrying about in the belly of the _Endless Bounty_, hardly worthy of his notice.

"I am pleased that you've come around to seeing things my way," As the platform became little more than a speck on the distant ground Zorn bowed deeply, perhaps a bit too deeply to be interpreted as respectful, "This will be a life changing boon if we are correct."

"You're sure about this," Sáclair grunted, "We've had a way of traveling faster than light without entering the warp _this close_ without ever knowing it?"

"The _Endless Bounty_ was built from the husk of a ship recovered from the depths of space my lord Sáclair, born from the ashes of the distant past," Zorn shrugged, "One presumes that there are many such technologies on different ships who's true functions have been lost to the ravages of time."

"But so great a boon," Sáclair sighed, reason overtaking him, "Tuul and Kerrigan were overcautious perhaps, but never foolish."

"We would be greater fools for not trying to recover so glorious a thing," The Navigator waved to the half repaired great hall, motioning to the cracked marble and shattered ornamentation, "Look at this ship, all that she has survived. Beyond the wildest expectation of its makers this ship has been reforged, reborn, repaired and re-invented so many times in human history that her first name has been lost to us. _Endless Bounty_ is her appellation and _Endless Bounty_ is her destiny Captain. Of that I have no doubt. Captain we live in fear of our own former greatness, of the unspoken times when we quenched the stars at a whim. We rightly fear the darkness it brought down upon us but to ignore the possibility that one of the greatest feats of mankind's distant past might be in our very midst is foolish."

"And if he protests to the Inquisitor?" Sáclair grimaced. Galling though it was, the Inquisitor was well within his rights to order Sáclair to stop. Even as the captain of the ship he was not entitled to defy inquisitorial edict, "Tuul is within his rights to do so."

"It might have been... implied, by certain members of the Nobility that you intend to allow Kerrigan to return to the ship. Provided, of course, that a certain Magos Adept tows the line till we next make port at Babylon Five," Calven carefully examined his cuticles, rubbing at them with a singe bony finger, "Implied in strong enough tones and with enough... "evidence" to convince even a skeptic."

"I dislike subterfuge Navigator Calven," To indifferently discuss subterfuge of that manner, as though Zorn were his co-conspirator and equal, set his hackles on end. The Navigator was taking more liberties than was his right, "And those I am assumed to support even less."

"Captain I'm offended," Zorn put his hands to his heart in an insincere gesture of hurt, "I am but a humble messenger. What the nobility chooses to say to the Enginseers is their own affair."

"Navigator you are either bold or foolish," Sáclair chuckled.

"I am neither Captain," the Navigator bowed again, "I am, as always, your humble servant."

"Begone," Sáclair waved imperiously, dismissing Zorn with a wave. It would not be till the Navigator stepped on to a marble platform and descended to the ground that Sáclair's own nagging frustration with the man's tone manifested into a coherent thought. Zorn used the same tone with Sáclair that the Captian used when talking with the Inquisitor.

"I'll be keeping a closer eye on you Navigator," Sáclair muttered to himself, "A much closer eye indeed."

* * *

Mr. Garibaldi was madder than hell and seemed damn sure someone was going to pay for it. The head of security didn't walk into John's office so much as he rolled into it like an oncoming storm. Knowing he would regret asking before the words even formed in his head he motioned to the seat across from his half-desk, "Take a seat Mr. Garibaldi."

"No offense Captain but if I sit down for more than a minute I'm afraid my head might explode because I'm too angry at myself for not doing something," He waved his arms skyward, "If anyone should have noticed it it was me, but _no_."

"Garibaldi, slow down," John had no idea what he was talking about, "What is going on?"

Garibaldi collapsed into the chair, sinking his face into his cupped hands, "John, they took Susan. She's been kidnapped."

John's face fell, he should have expected this. Susan hadn't been found yet, and it seemed unlikely she would ever be found. Hundreds of people just disappeared in the battle, consumed by the demon. He'd hoped that Garibaldi would have dealt with it better than this though.

Something of his thoughts must have been written on his face, "I'm not in denial Captain. She was kidnapped."

"Garibaldi... we've all lost more friends than I care to count. I know that I haven't been on this station as long as you have but I don't think that she'd want you to torture yourself over this," John braced himself for the inevitable backlash.

Garibaldi scrunched his eyes in concentration and took a couple of deep breaths, apparently resisting the urge to punch his superior officer in the face, "Sir. I'm not in denial. Susan Ivanova has been kidnapped."

Ok, fine. John could play along for the moment, "By whom? How?"

"Someone implanted a fake memory of Susan Ivanova into at least three members of a ten man security team," Garibaldi rubbed at the stubble on his chin, scraggly and unkept from days of not shaving, "I can't check them all, two of them are in medical comas and five died, but I suspect the whole team had their memories modified."

Ok so it wasn't playing at anything. John sighed, "How do you know?"

"Sir. Grown men do not repeat 'I just saw her a minute ago. She must be on the Zocalo' in endless sing-song naturally. I've seen it before, rogue telepaths can force the mind to believe something for a while but it doesn't last forever. The mind rejects the fake memories," Garibaldi pulled a thick stack of papers from his bag, flipping through them to a dog eared page with a highlighted section of text.

He tapped the page and handed it to John, "See, Susan hasn't used her link since the fifteenth. _Susan_. That woman hasn't been more than an inch from her link since birth. And look here," he pulled out a second sheet of paper, "The same day that link went out of commission look who they were assigned to guard."

"Bester," John blanched in horror looking at the name. Not only were Garibaldi's suspicions justified, they were all but confirmed, "Have you checked the security footage."

"Funny thing," Garibaldi said in a jovial tone that indicated it was anything but, "The security recordings of that section of the station seem to have erased themselves. Funny about that."

John shook his head in confusion, "But he left on a prison transport! How could he possibly have kidnapped her?"

"So was Jack," Garibaldi gnashed his teeth at the name of his betrayer. It hadn't been that long ago that his most trusted officer shot him in the back. Collecting himself he tapped his right temple with the side of his finger, "So I got to thinking, what happened to Bester's ship?"

"Don't tell me," John swore, "It disappeared two jumps in."

"Got it in one," Garibaldi nodded, "But I did find something out. There were two occupied cryo pods on that prison ship. One is listed as a 'prisoner for transport' but but the other is listed as a 'medical cadaver.'

"Susan," It wasn't really a question.

"Susan," Garibaldi confirmed, "The dock workers remember them loading a woman into a cryo pod, though none of them can quite remember why they didn't think that was odd."

"More memory modification," This didn't bode well. If the PsiCorps weren't obeying the most basic of laws for psychic conduct who knew what else they'd done on his station.

"That's what I thought too," Garibaldi nodded, "So I looked for reports of memory loss on that day one jump away from the one where we lost the transport, and I think I figured out where it was heading. There is a single ship that logged a flight to mars under a false ID code."

It was a pity Garibaldi didn't have anything more solid, "You know I can't officially authorize you to go to mars with what you've given me. It's convincing but it's all circumstantial."

"Captain! You've got to be kidding me. This is Susan we're talking about," Garibaldi's temper flared brilliantly, turning the bald patch in his forehead bright red.

"I can, however, authorize you for up to three months of leave for personal reasons in light of the traumatic events of the past week," John cleared his throat, "I hear Mars is a lovely place to go this time of year."

Garibaldi smiled, "Well if it's for my health."

"Good luck Garibaldi," John smiled, "And God's speed."

* * *

"I do not understand. How can one creature do this much violence?"

"Lennier," Delenn sighed, staring out at the morbid sight before her, "There are mysteries to the universe beyond my understanding. The compulsion to cruelty is among them."

Organized by species a thousand sheet covered bodies lay on the floor of the baseball diamond of the Babylon station laid end to end in long rows from one end of the pitch to the other, dead. Families of those who'd gone missing in the battle wandered the rows, looking for their loved ones. Those lucky few fell to their knees before a body, sobbing and hugging the cold form as though it would bring their beloved back from the cold embrace and death. The vast majority, however, just wandered the lines, hoping for closure that would likely never come.

They would never know what happened to their children, their spouses, their cousins, their friends. Delenn knew. Delenn knew all too well but telling them the truth would accomplish nothing. What comfort would they gain knowing that a demon consumed them, body and soul?

None. So she prayed for those who passed. She prayed and prayed and hoped for answers that never seemed to come willingly. Not that she was unique in her search to satisfy the unquiet dead. Babylon 5 was home to many species and many faiths. All came to pray and all seemed willing to accept the aid of their fellow divinities. The edge of the stadium was lined with candles, golden idols, prayer books, rosaries, stars, icons, incense, and the discarded organs of sacrificed animals.

However it was the diminutive man with a slight limp who caught her attention, the Imperial preacher Al'Ashir. With deliberate care not to disturb the icons already in place the man took a small pot of black grease paint out from his pocket and painted a crude image of a double headed eagle on the bleachers, praying in his native language. It was beautiful, almost musical, and seemed to encompass the man's sorrow and loss.

On a whim she walked over to the kneeling man and sat next to him. Her attendant followed her closely, his own curiosity just as piqued as hers was, "May I join you Father Al'Ashir."

The imperial clergyman stared at her in silence, his face a blank mask. Delenn's cheeks colored as she wondered if interrupting the man at prayer was taboo in the Imperial culture. Or at least she wondered right up to the moment that the clergyman burst into laughter, "I have been on station for days and it is Minbari who first seek blessings of the Emperor. Of irony there is much havings!"

"The Minbari seek to understand how all races find peace," Delenn chuckled politely, pretending to understand the joke. Any positive reaction was good, even if it was amusement at her expense, "It is how we find the wisdom in ourselves."

"The Emperor teaches to beware the honeyed words of Xenos, for they can lead to ruin. But he also teaches to teach all those who seek his wisdom," Al'Ashir shrugged, "So you see my problem. I cannot trust a word you say and must teach you what you seek."

"We are strangers to each other Father Al'Ashir," Delenn chuckled, "Trust is earned, not freely given. And a teacher must always question the words of his students. So it is that you will teach and I will listen."

"Wisdom wasted on wise," It seemed to be a joke so Delenn laughed politely, by his smile she'd guessed correctly. He crossed his legs and turned to face her, swiveling on the bleacher, "I am ready for the askings."

"If I may be so bold," Lennier stood next to the preacher's painting, "What does the Eagle stand for?"

"It is Aquilla, the symbol of the Emperor. Savior of mankind," He pulled open his book to a lovingly inscribed page with an elaborate illustration of a dark skinned and long haired man in golden armor. His naked blade pierced the neck of some foul beast as his clawed fist cradled a golden haired child, heroic and menacing, "Savior of humans."

"Only the humans?" Delenn probed politely, it was not uncommon for religions to have a distinct ethnocentricity to them. It was not usually born of malevolence, races tended to create the core principals of their religious beliefs prior to contact with other races.

"Al'Ashir heard of part humans and abhumans accepted into the bosom of the Emperor... but the truth of such conversions of great controversy. Not popular... not common... most end badly," Father Al'Ashir shrugged, "But pure _xenos..._ Al'Ashir could not say. The afterlife of men not for others. "

"I am not pure... _xenos_. Though Minbari by birth I now have human blood running through my veins," She chewed her lip "Would he consider me one of his?"

"Minbari can make a Minbari into a human," Al'Ashir stroked his beard, looking distinctly ill at the prospect, "Not sure... it is not for me to say. Some might say heresy, some might do harm. Al'Ashir not say. Only He can judge what is in soul. Only He can speak. Only you can listen."

"Does the Emperor speak to you," Lenneir probed politely.

"Al'Ashir had heard his voice," the priest nodded, "His will. It is His will that Al'Ashir is here, to teach, to learn. There is much confusion, many people who need his word. I will bring his word and his love to those who need it."

"I wish you luck father Al'Ashir," Lenneir bowed, "I would be honored to learn from you."

"And I would be honored to pray with both of you," Al'Ashir waved to the mass of bodies, "I do not know which of them the Emperor bring to paradise but I would appreciate your aid in praying for those who cannot. It not their fault for being xenos. We do not pick birth."

"Yes," Delenn coughed, only slightly insulted by the implication of "xenos inferiority." It was to be expected.

So the three sat, spoke, and prayed for hours. Delenn sunk deeper into meditative calm, seeking the wisdom of the universe and the salvation of the dead, listening to the sonorous words of the preacher and watching as he prostrated himself before the prayerbook. A curious mood overtook her as she stared into the eyes of the illustration and she could almost have sworn that the eyes turned to stare back at her, observing her with paternal interest.

But only for a moment before returning to prayers as Al'Ashir's furious ritual reached its climax.

"Ave Imperator," He whispered in reverence, "To your greatness we pray, Amen."

"Amen," Delenn repeated under her breath reflexively in the heat of the moment, thinking of piercing eyes and ominous providence. There was much to learn indeed. And, Valen willing, much to teach.

* * *

The Library was impressive. Leather bound tomes and oilskin wrapped scrolls were shoved into every nook and cranny of the shelves, only hinting at the knowledge therein. It was the sort of place that didn't simply hold records of history, in a very real way it was intrinsically part of it. The furnishings, far apart from the sort of excessive opulence Captain Sáclair was prone too, were of the more subdued earthy skins of some leathery beast, perhaps a grox. Never one for spending too much time in libraries it seemed that the room had been saved from the excessive ornamentation the rest of the household suffered.

Daul stared across the low coffee table to the glaring redhead, more convinced that ever that he'd made the correct decision in apprenticing her. Her spirit would have been wasted rotting away in some dark cell. He pulled the power cell out of the handgun and tossed the now harmless weapon back to her, "Now, Miss Ivanova. You are going to listen to me."

"Why? Because you're some all powerful Inquisitor?" She said by way of scathing retort, "You're just an angry drunk who beats his slaves to feel better about himself."

"I was not at my best, that I admit," Daul sighed. It had been unnecessarily cruel to admonish Galut in the way he'd chosen too, "Liquor was a reason, but but no excuse for my behavior."

"Oh so 'I'm sorry' makes up for it?" Susan punched the table, scattering scrolls to the floor, "You _crippled_ me for a better disguise."

"They did repair you to your full health did they not?" Daul considered the matter, "If I don't miss my guess you're an inch taller for your troubles."

Incensed, the woman screeched at the top of her lungs, balling her fists. It was only through sheer power of will that she did not leap across the table and attempt to throttle the Inquisitor.

"Now, we are going to have to discuss your training as an Inquisitor. There are many talents I'm sure your career in professional soldiery has given you, but you are woefully uneducated in so many other matters," Daul sighed. He would only be giving her a slipshod education at best but it was better than the alternative.

"_We_ are not discussing anything. There is no _we_. There is no apprenticeship. There is no training," Susan stood up and walked to the center of the library, "I want nothing to do with this you lunatic."

Daul sighed and looked at her sympathetically, "Have the dreams started yet?"

Susan stiffened, her back still turned to him, "I haven't got a clue what you're talking about."

"You hear voices. Tempting voices. They offer you what you lack in life. Love, power, safety, health, or lost loved ones, promising you everything. But they feel wrong to you somehow," Susan turned around, looking at him in horror, "You reject them, so they show you terrible things that will happen to you for defying them. Every night you have the dreams and every night denying them is harder."

Susan clutched the six pointed star necklace hanging from her neck, "How do you know that?"

"Because they are mine... or they were before my master trained me to block them from my mind," Daul stood and walked over to Susan, placing his flesh and blood hand on her shoulder, "They lie to you Susan. Do not trust them."

"What are they?" Susan's voice was not friendly, but there was less bile.

"They are... demons," She shot him an incredulous glance but he was in no mood for her skepticism, "Do you doubt them when they claw at your dreams and boil your flesh for your defiance? No, you sit in bed afraid to sleep for fear that they will return."

She frowned, "Why do they want me?"

"Frankly they don't. You are only a means to an end," He shrugged, "They require a mortal to be complicit to enter our realm. To that end they gnaw at the minds of all psychics, though their ministrations are more transparent while we travel through the warp. As to why they are as insistent to get into your mind, it is because you have been in mine."

"But... I don't know anything important," the Alliance soldier assured him, "Nothing that would help them or harm you!"

"They don't know or care. You have something, which is enough for them to desire you," Daul shrugged, "Having _any_ glimpse into my mind makes you dangerous. Too dangerous to allow you to run free without protection."

"Why do you want me to be your apprentice? Why..." She swallowed uncomfortably, "Why not just kill me?"

"Have you done anything to make me want you dead?" Daul sighed, "In truth, it is because of what I suspect you know. What you will feel, as I feel. Because the burden of it is too much for me to bear alone."

"But I don't..." Susan protested.

Daul snapped his fingers, silencing her with an effort of will, "What did I find in Gaal's fortress."

Susan's eyes bugged in her head as she associated visceral images with memory, the horrible truth of it coming to the forefront of her mind. She fell to her knees, and vomited, "What was that?"

"One of my memories," Daul sighed, "The one that occupies the forefront of my mind. You know it for the same reason I know that you have serious feelings for Miss Winters. We have a measure of each other's thoughts. I do not begin to guess how many of mine you have Miss Ivanova but any is too many, provided that I cannot ensure you can be trusted with them."

"How... I'm barely a P1, barely a psychic at all," Susan shivered as she stood up, wiping the sick from her lips with the back of her hand, "And those... god... what was that..."

"Miss Ivanova, psychic talent must be cultivated and practiced in order to reach its potential. If starved ones talents can atrophy. When your mother," He nodded at her look of shock, "Yes I know about your mother. When your mother disappeared I suspect you sabotaged your own gift. But it can be fixed, healed, improved."

"And you plan on keeping me as your apprentice till you're sure I can be trusted? What I'm supposed to just follow you around because you say so?" Susan ground her teeth together in fury, "Inquisitor I _hate_ you."

Daul snapped his fingers and servo skull whipped from the ceiling down to Susan's rear, injecting her with a syringe at the base of her skull. Furious, Susan grabbed the machine and slammed it to the floor, shattering it into a thousand tiny pieces, "What the hell was that?"

"That was the implantation of an explosive at the base of your skull. Should you go farther than fifty yards away from me at any time or should I deem it necessary it will explode with sufficient force to ensure that none of my secrets are spread to anyone else," Daul waved to the seats, "Now, let us continue your education."

"You're a son of a bitch," Susan growled.

"It's been said before Miss Ivanova. It will be said again." He didn't want to have to resort to this but needs were musts, "But I doubt it will be necessary. In time you will even come to enjoy your position."

The woman stared daggers at him, "I will kill you one day. I will have my revenge."

"We will have _our_ revenge," An afterimage of piles of broken bodies flashed in his mind, temporarily dragging him back in time, but only for a moment, "Martin did not deserve to die. My servants... my friends... Help me in getting Faust, Miss Ivanova and I will not hesitate to allow you to kill me."

Susan's eyes bugged as the name associate itself with the memory, a face to the mangled corpse. The love of a child for his parent and a parent for his child, of holiday mornings and bedtime stories. A lifetime of love gone in an instant. She stared at him a mix of pity and hatred in her eyes, "Fine, but not for you. For him... but I have a price."

Daul couldn't help but laugh at the audacity of it. She truly was perfect for the job, tenacious and brash, "You're in no place to bargain."

"Funny how I don't see it that way," The woman crossed her arms, refusing to budge, "I demand that you help me find the serial killer murdering Belzafester children. Ami doesn't seem to think its being dealt with properly."

Of all the request she could have made, this was possibly the least expected he could have imagined. He'd thought perhaps she'd request to wear her uniform or contact her government, or any number of other things he would have to deny. But finding a murderer of children, "Why miss Ivanova, it would be my absolute pleasure to comply."

* * *

Senator Hidoshi rubbed at the sleep in his eyes frustratedly, the danish he'd grabbed on the way to the Geneva complex nowhere near sufficient to silence the rumbles his stomach was making. Hopefully someone would have remembered to tell an intern to fetch something more substantial than coffee and pastries but with all the secrecy associated with the most recent defense meeting it seemed unlikely any food would be allowed at all for fear of listening devices.

He reached out and pressed the down button on the elevator, smiling exhaustedly at the man who was leaning against the wall and tapping a food impatiently, "Good morning Senator Lechner."

"Good morning," Lechner replied, looking down at his watch in confusion, "Good grief man, you called my office thirty minutes ago saying you were in the parking lot. How long does it take you to walk fifty feet?"

"ISN ambushed me outside asking questions, I couldn't get away from them without making it look like I had something to hide," Senator Hidoshi massaged his temples, "Which we can't afford at the moment."

"Blood suckers," Lechner sighed, "Do they know?"

"Haven't you watched the news today?" Hidoshi slipped into the already crowded elevator, nodding in acknowledgement of Senator Joyce and Senator Franken and exchanging greetings.

"No," Lechner rolled his neck, popping the bones of it and massaging the nape of it with his left hand, "I've been stuck in a closed meeting with the CdC. They've been planning contingency plans for if a disease crosses over from the Imperials."

"I though we cleared the Imperials?" Senator Joyce interjected between sips of coffee, looking up in genuine interest.

"No," Lechner sighed, "Their first contact party was wearing encounter suits at first, but since then it's just become a nightmare. We have truly no idea what new microbes have been introduced to the environment, till we do new quarantine procedures are going to have to be put in place for people who've been in contact with the Imperials."

"The trade unions won't like that, Babylon 5 is a major port," Franken winced. A large portion of his campaign funds came from commercial interests in that area, "It's going to be a problem."

"Not as big as a plague," Lechner turned back to Hidoshi, eager to change the conversation, "So what is it on the news that I'm supposed to have seen?"

"They have recordings of the battle on ISN," Senator Joyce supplied, swearing in frustration as his coffee burned the inside of his mouth, "Damn it! Just once I want them to serve coffee to me at a temperature normal human beings can drink."

"It's part of the charm of the cafeteria," Lechner provided sarcastically, "How bad of a PR situation is it?"

"Worse than you think," Franken patted the pocked of his jacket, his fingers tapping a box of cigarettes wistfully through the tweed of his jacket, "We've been able to convince ISN up till now to wait to air more than rumors till Earth manages to arrange a more permanent diplomatic situation but we've lost control of this. They've been talking about nothing else for the past six hours."

Hidoshi shrugged, "It's a recording of Earth Allaince Ships defending Babylon Five from a Vorlon attack, can you blame them? It's the first time I've ever heard of a Vorlon ship losing." How the recording survived the battle so wholly in tact and unaffected by the Vorlon electronic countermeasures was a matter of great debate but the recording was unquestionably genuine.

Hidoshi scrunched his eyes as a layer of green light swept across the occupants of the elevator, checking them for weapons. After a friendly affirmative chime the elevator slowed to a halt, opening into a long corridor sloping downwards.

Blinking the stars out of his eyes Franken led the way down the hallway, "I just wish we'd had some space between the public discovering that apparently humans evolved in more than one place in the universe before we have them punch the Vorlons in the schnoz right on our doorstep. People aren't dealing with it well."

"I admit, the more conservative base is... struggling to cope with the new revelation..." Lechner pushed open the wide door at the end of the hall, nodding to the guards and smiling pleasantly.

It was a gross understatement. The Earth centrists were eating each other alive. Some people were crying that the Imperials being human was an elaborate hoax, others were demanding answers for why they hadn't assisted against the Minbari and still others were claiming that the Earth Allaince ought to annex the Empire as soon as possible, never mind that the Earth Alliance didn't have the remotest clue where Imperial territory actually was. But arguing with Lechner over the semantics of it wouldn't be productive.

For the first time in his recent memory Senator Lechner was quite possibly the most valuable political ally in the room. It wouldn't do to antagonize him when he needed his support so badly in the immediate future, "I'm sure cool heads will prevail Senator."

Lechner's eyes roved around the room, assessing the defense sub-committee with critical unease, "We can only hope."

"No time like the present then lads," Senator Joyce flopped down into an open chair, "Lets get this bloody mess over with."

The Vice President looked up from the other side of the table, crossing his arms and scowling, "Ah, good of you to join us Senators, we were just finishing up discussing the issue at hand and we're about to put it to a vote."

"Which issue is that?" Senator Hidoshi sat in his chair and poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table.

"Don't be cute Hidoshi, stalling isn't going to make this any easier on your pet project," The Vice President blithely rejoined, "Our only agenda is obvious; the court martial of Captain John Sheridan."

* * *

A/N: Another cell phone chapter, so please point out any errors you find.

If you're interested I've started making a themed army based off of this story. Check it out at -online.?p=1218240#post1218240


	16. Chapter 16

The nightmares came, as they always did. Memories of the worst moments imaginable: a single fragment of Susan's many borrowed nightmares. She dreamed in terrifying episodes of stolen horror and sound, ruptured echoes only half-remembered in their malformed splendor. It was not her fear, her unease - it was his, the Inquisitor's. Daul's fear, and Daul's terror.

Daul had trained her to guard her mind against the predations of warp creatures as she slept, but protecting herself from demons of one sort only brought about demons of another. Daul's past echoed in her mind,her mental defenses useless against her stolen memories.

Aliens and eldritch monstrosities snickered and snapped at her heels, fighting her at every turn. The dreams had made sleep a battle as terrible as the one she fought while awake. It was not wading through the muck and mire of war trenches in some long gone battle, not the darkest of demons nor the charnel house of a an alien's monstrous appetites.

But it kept coming back to the house and the man.

The dream was always the same, the same place with the same victims. The house, the smells, Metzik. Susan hadn't ever been to Metzik, but she knew that the homely woodsman's house was larger than it strictly needed to be for Daul's family. Nor had she witnessed the Skur'nek birds that used to roost beneath the wide window boxes of flowers that Daul's mother arranged, but she knew it all the same. Its familiarity only served to make its deep homeliness more alien to her, aided and abetted by the creeping horror which she knew Daul felt every time he laid eyes on the building.

Other dreams passed as whispering and easily-forgotten bursts of terror, but not this one. She would sit for what felt like hours just staring at the door, too terrified to enter. Something terrible lived in that house now, something wrong and evil: a monster beyond contempt, and beyond hatred. Susan didn't know what it was or why it was there, only the creeping and unformed fear that a child had for what she knew lay in the shadows.

She knew what came next, but continued through the motions as she had every time before. Her body floated across the dreamscape like through some sort of fluid, not walking so much as gliding. As the high pitched howls of the women inside hit a crescendo, she willed her body to go faster, urging her phantom limbs forward to little effect. She could only hover forwards as first the mother, then the eldest daughter, then the middle daughter screamed in betrayed disbelief as the life was cut out of them.

It was only after the sound of the youngest daughter's squeals, high pitched and uncomprehending like the squeals of a piglet, squelched into silence with the crash of snapping jaws that her body responded as she knew it ought to. She bashed in the door with a kick she doubted her physical body could have managed, reflexively grabbing the wide woodsman's axe from where she knew it had been left next to the door.

The creature had to die.

The first time that she'd walked in, she'd been so furious she hadn't thought to bring a weapon. The beast had slaughtered her, waking her up from the dream terrified and sobbing. She hadn't made that mistake again. Every time the dream came, she fought the beast. Every time, the beast killed her. But she would be damned before she gave up and let herself give up because of a bad dream.

Susan inched her way forward with slow and careful steps, keeping to the shadows and taking care not to step on the creaky floor board as she crept up the back step. Susan took care not to look at the photos or paintings on the wall for fear of being crippled by an errant memory. Too much of Daul was wrapped up in this house.

Too much was bound to the last place he'd ever felt safe.

In the distance, she knew a little boy would be crying down skinny cheeks and doing his best to hide himself behind his own knobbly knees. It had taken her a few trips through the dream to realize who he was. The memory of Daul as a child was unrecognizable from what he'd become, especially after melting in her cradled arms as she tried in vain to cary the sobbing child to safety.

She hated the Inquisitor, but she couldn't bring herself to hate this little boy enough to let the monster have him.

But she couldn't put herself between him and it, not yet. Facing the creature head on hadn't worked. Running hadn't worked. A dozen plans so far had ended in bloody failure. It was time to use the creature's own ego against it. So Susan bit her lip and ignored every instinct in her body as she listened to the disgusting creature prowl forwards on its lanky legs, dragging its protruding belly along the ground behind it with loping jerks of its skeletally elongated fingers.

Unhindered by Susan's intervention, the creature stuck its head into the boy's room, cackling with barely restrained ecstasy. It slapped hands on the white paint of the walls, still dripping red from the slaughter below, defiling the symbols of worship on either side of the door with incalculable spite. "Daul... are we playing games now, Daul? Daddy likes games."

Susan's breath caught in her throat, rushing up with the taste of bile and regret. No, it wasn't time yet. She needed to be sure it wouldn't be able to strike back at her with those taloned fingers. The boy would have to endure a little longer. She knew he wasn't real, but somehow that didn't seem to matter to her as she endured a tiny, keening sob from where she knew the boy hid.

"Why don't we play a game Daddy likes? Do you want to play the game Daddy and Mommy just played? I promise we'll only do it once," it cackled to itself as it tore the clothes in Daul's closet to shreds. Susan swooned as she made the mistake of staring at a ruined sweater and was briefly overpowered with a warm memory of the woman who'd knitted it. The smiling apple cheeked woman whose entrails now decorated the downstairs landing hit her in the heart like a sledgehammer, mingling with her own dull memories of having a mother.

"Or do you want to play a game of hide and seek? Oh, what a naughty child you are for hiding from daddy," The creature continued its pretense of searching, apparently oblivious to Susan, "Remember... Daddy loves you, doesn't he?" More laughter followed.

Oh yeah. It needed to die.

Susan crept behind the creature as it began its final speech, making her way to the door's narrow opening. She slowly took one step, then another, not daring to even breathe for fear that the noise might alert the beast to her presence. The creature was strong, but dull witted and easily distracted despite its agile ferocity. She'd nearly escaped it once by doubling back to the cottage five miles into the dense forrest of Metzik until the boy had whimpered loudly in fear.

First one step, then two: she crept closer and closer as the beast continued its cruel game of cat and mouse, "Here's some new rules to the game. Daddy finds you, and we play a game he likes. Daddy doesn't find you and you get to leave?"

A small voice hiccuped in fear just behind the creature, the softand heartbreaking whimper of a horrified child. "Only a few more seconds," Susan reminded herself silently, "You only need to keep him busy for a few more seconds."

Seconds passed as the creature stood in the center of the room, raving incoherently till it grew bored of its own speeches. Susan ducked behind the door frame, clutching the axe to her breast as the creature turned to face her, only missing her by moments. She held her breath and listened as it came closer to her.

Drag-thump, drag-thump, drag-thump: inch by inch, moment by moment till the creature's flaring nostrils just poked past the door, spraying a thin mist of caustic smoke as the creature hissed in snorting laughter in its moment of victory. Its triumph turned to disbelief as Susan spun on her heel, driving the axe's cold iron blade between the creature's nostrils, splitting the creature's head with a gratifying splatter of thick blood upon the floor.

It howled piteously and hissed a sibilant plea: "Mercy."

But there would be none, not for this thing. Bellowing furious staccato screams of fury, she beat the creature till her body refused to continue, covering herself with the creature's entrails with each collision of the blade. She swung till the axe fell from her tired fingers, cold iron blade still sizzling with unnatural flashes of breaking ether.

She collapsed to the floor, sobbing with exhaustion and pent-up emotions, staring at the blood coating her fingers and willing her petrified hands to relax. It was over. She'd won. Fear and adrenaline twisted into glorious hysteria as she rocked on her knees whooping in victory, "First rule of Babylon 5, do not mess with Susan-fragging-Ivanova!"

Brushing the bigger bits of monster from her chest, Susan called out to the huddled boy behind the bed, "It's safe...you're safe."

She stood up and took a tentative step in the boy's direction, wobbling uneasily on tired legs. It was only a dream, and she could control a dream. She told herself to forget how her legs would operate in normal life: just will them to work and they should work. She rambled semi-coherently to herself, "Come on Ivanova, you just killed the monster. Walking between here and the bed should be child's play."

She did, and they didn't. Her imagination, suffering from the unfortunate fate of the pragmatist, was apparently hopelessly bound to reality. Her feet stayed fixed in place as she called out again, "Come on Daul. It's over, you're safe."

A sad little boy with a tear-stained face stood up from behind the bed,a stuffed animal clutched to his chest. With a sad little sigh and a shake of his head, the child stared at her with eyes, piercing and sad like those of the Daul she knew. "Miss Ivanova. It's never over."

And with that simple pronouncement, the world shifted. Tentacles erupted from the blood and gore around her. Malodorous hunks of sinew, tooth, and bone formed manacles, binding her arms and legs before she could reach for the axe. Horrified, Susan yelled, "Daul! Daul, what are you doing?"

The child scrunched his eyes and tore the stuffed creature in half. He screamed in agony, "It. Is. Never. Over."

Tiny hands dropped the ripped animal and reached out for her, pleading, begging, but never reaching. The child's body fell apart at the seams, breaking into bits and pieces of charnel. Hot, sticky blood seeped from the pile of meat, covering the room in a thick wave of red, an ocean of blood full of floating bodies.

A sea of bodies drifted in endless stacks around her. Pretty, ugly, rich, poor, human, alien: all were equal in death. They all stared at her with glassy-eyed expressions of betrayal, demanding that she explain why she hadn't saved them. Bodies piled out for eternity centered around the ruined pile of a broken little boy, laid beneath the crucified remains of an old man.

Names, places, wars, conflicts, betrayals, mistakes, victories, joys, sorrows: all were soaked in the blood of a billion victims crying for justice. A billion names screamed in pain and fear, and Susan scrunched her eyes shut so she didn't have to see the child's detached lips still howling, "It never ends! Why will it never end? Throne, let it finish! Please save me."

Susan struggled with her manacles, whispering incoherent platitudes. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I tried to save you, I tried. I just can't."

"A man has to save himself," whispered an earthy voice in her ear as a firm hand grasped her around the waist, "You can't force a man to be another man, though I'll be damned if you women don't try."

Before Susan could so much as blurt out a "Who are you?" the strong arm had yanked her backwards through a hole in space, jerking her from the endless charnel piles and into a rather homey-looking kitchen. Dizziness overtook her, forcing her into one of the chairs next to the hearth.

An old man in coveralls walked out from the tear in space, zipping it shut and shoving the glowing ball of energy into a thick sack-cloth bag. Deft fingers tied the shimmering string into an impossible knot, trapping the nightmare inside. With a final grunt of satisfaction the man pitched the parcel into the fireplace, burning it to cinders before shooting Susan a disgusted look. "Dreams were never meant to be borrowed."

"I didn't mean to," Susan whispered, trying not to drip blood on the white linen tablecloth, "It wasn't really..."

"It never is," The old man stretched out his hands, lacing the fingers together with a fleshy popping of joints, "But meaning to do right and doing right aren't the same, and they aren't always obvious. What were you thinking in there?"

"I was going to save him," Susan coughed, spitting up someone else's blood on the clean floor. The red liquid sizzled and spat on hard-wood surface, scarring it black. "I wanted to save him."

"Doesn't seem to me that he's given you much of a reason to want to save him," The man patted his breast pocket, grumbling in a language she vaguely recognized as the language of the northern continent. "Odd choice, really."

"It was the right thing to do," Susan shrugged. She could no more have left a child to suffer than cut off her own foot. "So I did it."

"The right thing to do," The old man chortled, though if it were in approval or incredulity she couldn't say. He barked out a quick laugh. "Yes, you'll do nicely."

Before Susan could ask exactly what he expected her to "do nicely" the man fished a long wooden something out of his pocket and waved vaguely behind Susan, "I swear, a pipe always hides when I need it," he announced to the tiny kitchen. He sniffed the air twice, before wrinkling his nose and asking, "You mind washing up in the basin? I'm not one for bad manners, and it's terribly rude to imply a lady isn't at her best, but I believe that shade of ichor doesn't suit your complexion."

Before she could rationalize the futility of washing up to look nicer in a dream, Susan realized that she'd already started walking to the basin, wiping the mess from her face and hair with an embroidered white dish towel. And crazy though it was, doing so helped her feel cleaner. More than simple physical grime, she felt the guilt, the stress and the worry of the past week washing away as she scrubbed.

She scraped away the last of the mess and looked down at the basin,expecting to see foul water and a dirty rag, only to discover a spotless basin of clear water and a cloth just as white and clean as she'd started with. The old man ruffled her hair playfully, "Child, you're in a dream. Belief guides reality. You can achieve anything you believe in your own dreams."

"I couldn't beat it," Susan growled. There was no need to elaborate what "it" was; the glow of the nightmare still pulsed in the old man's pocket. "How does belief figure into that?"

"Think," the man said, tapping his forehead with his middle and index finger, "Why is it that none of you think before you act."

"I did think. I thought of every way that creature could be killed. I tried every absurd, outrageous and exaggerated plan to kill it. None of them worked," Susan blinked as an absurdly simple thought occurred to her, "But it didn't matter, did it?"

"No," the old man shook his head sympathetically, comfortingly patting her on the shoulder, "It wasn't your demon to face. Wasn't your past to overcome."

"But the nightmares will come back?" Susan sighed, "I know it will."

"If you finish your training, without a doubt," sighed the old man. He grinned fondly and whispered into her ear, "But not for a while. Not 'till you have demons enough of your own for this one to seem like a blessing."

And then, as fast as the dream came, it disappeared into an incoherent mess of darkness and shadows. The nightmare of bodies and the simple, homely kitchen shimmered into fleeting dreams without consequence or comprehension, devoid of importance. They spirited her along for hours of confused dreaming until her servant, deeming her tardy for her morning ablution, startled her into action with the weight of a silver tea tray and an Inquisitorial summons.

Hilder, it always came back to Hilder.

* * *

Lord Refa was not pleased in the slightest. He was, in point of fact, livid to the point of bursting the seams of his lace collar. Swamped by decades of entrenched hatreds and existing prejudices, he would not be reconciled to wisdom of having acted in unison with the Narn war machine. He snarled, "Ambassador Mollari, we had an understanding. We were to propel the Centauri Empire back to its rightful place in the would be the kings of the galaxy. And after all that talk, you unilaterally decided to bring about this abomination!"

"Lord Refa," Londo hissed through clenched teeth, repeating himself for what had to be the twelfth time. The Centauri noble hadn't let him get in a word edgewise since their conversation had started, simply talking over his futile attempts to explain himself.

"Plans laid over a period of years are being shredded to pieces Mollari. Partisans I'd been sure we'd be able to remove quickly and quietly are finding allies in the military," he pinched his thumb and pinky together in a ward against evil, brushing his chest twice in disgust, "And even those who are allies to us are more worried about protecting the Vorlon border than the Narn one. And I can't blame them. Great maker, what possessed you to toss us into this conflict?"

The shrill "t" of conflict echoed around the small space of Mollari's quarters. The rooms afforded to passengers onboard a warship, even those given to an ambassador, were hardly spacious. The size and and the ship's spartan architecture combined with the gaudy extravagance of the Centauri Republic to make a uniquely unpleasant echoing boom to Lord Refa's continuing rant.

If he didn't cut the noble off soon he risked going deaf or mad. "Enough," Londo bellowed, "Do you have something in particular you wished to discuss, or am I simply your sounding board for the blisteringly obvious?"

"Mollari, the court is in an uproar. Lords and courtesans are pacing up and down the gardens, looking even more flurried as even the most outlandish of rumors are proven true by your own reports," he flapped his arms in an entirely un-lordlike manner, his sweat-stained lace ruff dangling limply in despondency, "It's not good," he muttered, perhaps the understatement of the century.

"To hell with the court, to hell with the gossip, to hell with the rumors," Mollari snarled disgustedly, "And to hell with yourself while you're at it, I wouldn't want you to feel left out." He was neither drunk enough nor well rested enough to suffer Lord Refa's continuing insinuations.

"How dare you speak to me that way. I was the one who brought you into the fold of what is to come," the Centauri nobleman on the other side of the screen sniffed imperiously, his eyes flashing with a dangerous edge of malice, "It does not speak well to our plans."

"Your plans could not have succeeded as well as they have without my connections, my allies, and me. I am your plans Lord Refa. Without me you have nothing," Londo shook his head, "Do not forget that."

"We have not forgotten what aid you provided, Mollari, but our gratitude only extends so far. Are we bound to this madness of yours because you were useful to us once?" Refa clucked his tongue against his teeth in doubt, "I think not."

"Lord Refa," Londo growled in a tone of breaking glass, "We are bound by our treaties to the Babylon charter."

"Treaties? Bah! They're words on a page, Londo. I'm not a fool to be appeased with such a facile explanation," the irritatingly perceptive lout smirked over the link, "You were scrupulously quick to act the enforcing of this treaty, too quick for it to be a mere twist of fate."

Suddenly the uncharacteristic rudeness of Lord Refa took on an entirely new aspect, Refa wasn't angry with him per se. Refa was angry but his rage only served as a pretense for his true purpose. Refa was afraid.

He didn't know that Londo's plan was. How could he? It wasn't as though he'd made his connections with the elusive Mr. Morden public knowledge. It wouldn't take that great of a leap in logic to assume that Londo's secret allies and the Imperials were one and the same. For that matter, Refa might well believe that it could have been a secret Narn plot the entire time and that Londo had no allies. No, they would have to assume that it was a Narn plot in order to reconcile the speed with which he brought the task force to Babylon 5 without contacting his own government, as well as the lack of hesitation from G'Kar.

This was not a conversation between allies for Refa; it was a man trying to reason with a rabid beast in his larder. If Londo didn't convince Refa of the wisdom of allying with the Narn he could easily wake with a knife in his back or poison in his drink.

Some creative truth would be necessary, "Indeed. It's almost as though I knew they were coming before they arrived."

Refa's lips puckered in an amusing imitation of someone who'd downed vinegar instead of wine, "What?"

"Lord Refa, I was not just unilaterally creating a joint task force to bring them back to Babylon 5 on some bizarre whim. I knew they were coming." It was only partially a lie. He'd not known it would be the Vorlons, else he never would have agreed to Morden's proposal. But he had known exactly where and when a fleet would be arriving to destroy Babylon 5.

"Your contacts... are capable of tracking the Vorlons?" The words came from Refa's lips slowly, not asking a question so much as tasting the concept as it passed his own lips. It had to seem absurd, if not impossible.

"Indeed," Londo grinned as though it were the most obvious solution. "And I felt it was in our best interest to maintain our relationship with a race that has such obvious potential."

"But allying with the Narn," The Centauri Lord hissed 'Narn' like a vile oath, "They're... Narn."

"And they die spectacularly well, don't they? G'Kar was more than eager to offer up their second homeworld defense fleet. It's a fleet that is now in shambles, along with a few of our own, yes, but none of them younger than seventy years out of the docks." It was a product of calling in favors owed to house Mollari rather than any sort of actual planning, but beneficial none the less. Londo continued the chain of logic: "And with one of their prime fleets shattered, the Narn have had to weaken the Narn-Centauri border to make up for it. Quite coincidental, yes?"

Refa laughed heartily, slapping his knee in relief, "Great Maker, were there ever a Centauri so devious as you before, we might never have lost Narn in the first place. Yes...yes, I can convince our allies to see the wisdom of your plan. The Narn will never see it coming...it's genius, pure genius Mollari!"

"I have my moments," Londo sighed, "Is there something else you wished to talk about?"

"No Mollari...that was more than sufficient. Just be sure that your allies are ready to move when we are," Lord Refa rubbed his palms together, visibly giddy at the prospect of his coming rise in station, "Just make sure they're ready."

Londo's blood froze as the screen went to black, muttering to himself quietly, "They'll be ready."

The elusive Mr. Morden and his allies claimed that they were now in his debt, but as time passed Londo realized that having them owe him could only bind the Centauri closer with them. His one communication with Mr. Morden since the battle had been... unusual to say the least.

Mr. Morden had smiled for the entire conversation. It wasn't his usual facade of polite indulgence but a genuine grin of accomplishment. It was the sort of grin that spoke of decades of planning coming to fruition. He was happy, relaxed, and, most unnervingly of all, speaking in plain English without the thinly veiled subtext that usually accompanied his every word.

His simple honest pronouncement of, "Well done Ambassador. Things went better than we could have ever dreamed," sent shivers down his spine that still tingled with dark premonition. But he had better things to do with his time than brood over what was or what might still be. Things like lunch with the Narn... a prospect only slightly less appealing than another meeting with Mr. Morden.

The Ambassador grunted as the joints of his knees popped audibly as he stood, reminding him of his own not insubstantial age. Cursing his body for slowly betraying him, he rubbed the pain out of his left knee and pressed the control for the door of his quarters.

The bright purple and gold corridor yawed in either direction, following the curvature of the ship. Fading murals depicting former battles of the great Centauri Conquest hid beneath a layer of greying age and shabbiness. Barely visible Centauri warriors chased their foes down the path to the mess hall, hurrying Londo along with their greying charge. Relics of the Empire's former greatness moved with the shadow of who Londo had once been.

Londo could remember being young and idealistic. He had once believed that he could conquer the stars with the speed of his wit and the strike of his blade. "Paso Leati" they'd called him, the crazed leati. He lived and fought with a fervor that few men could muster. But the nail that stands out gets hammered down with time, and Londo had been beaten down in the wars of the court. The Republic had no room for his passion.

The smiling faces of young Centauri crewmen he passed reminded him of who he'd been. Time and life had taken his hope, his youth, and his passion. He wasn't much more than an old man with old dreams any more. The universe couldn't take his dreams, not today. He wasn't done with them yet.

In the mess hall he came face to face with another of his dreams, the man from his nightmares: G'kar, the Narn who would one day kill him. It was not in doubt; it was prophecy, fact. They would one day die choking the life from each other. He had seen it. It would happen, but not today.

Today he would sit and smile politely and pretend that he did not detest G'Kar simply for existing. Today he would do the right thing for his people. Today he would resolve a long standing issue between his people and the Narn.

G'Kar sat with Na'Toth and four other Narn at the officer's table, basking in the Captain's disgust. Given the choice, Gaius Gerand would have sooner cut of his arm than allow a Narn at his table. But a physical meeting was necessary for the sort of negotiations Londo wished to do, and going to the Narn fleet in person would be impractical. Firstly, he wanted the "home field" advantage and secondly, because the Narn fleet was three times the size of the Centauri one. Were the Narn to decide to misbehave, it was unlikely that the Centauri fleet could recover or destroy him fast enough.

So Gerand tolerated the intrustion and offered G'Kar the same rights and courtesies that he would offer to any other Ambassador. It was cruel to force the Captain to cater to G'Kar's whims, but it would put the Narn at ease. He was substantially more pliant whilst given the opportunity to annoy Centauri.

Devoid of all Centauri save the captain and a few Marines, Londo had no difficulty in finding a chair. The officers had opted for extra duties rather than force themselves to play nice with the Narn. It was to be expected.

As Londo sat down he realized that the two of them were staring intently at a hexagonal wooden board with 121 small holes in it, moving colored stones and silvery metal tiles, "I did not know you played Dominion, Ambassador G'Kar."

"I'm passably familiar with the game," G'Kar's red eyes followed Captian Gerand's chubby fingers as they moved a cavalry tile over two spaces, seizing the red glass stone and killing his archer tile. "It was popular for Centauri to keep a Narn servant who could understand the game in order to practice on. It has since fallen into... disfavor." That it was equally common practice to have the servant beaten for having the temerity to win to easily or lose too obviously to hardly needed be said. The disgust in his voice was palpable.

"The Ambassador's strategy is curious," Captain Gerand snorted as G'Kar retreated into one of the castle spaces with his knight, entirely missing the opportunity to kill the Captain's advancing swordsman and leaving his left flank entirely open, "He seems to be hoping that if he retreats far enough my soldiers will tire and go home."

G'Kar ignored the jab and looked up at Londo as he advanced his knight behind the swordsman, halting the progress of the Captain's force by taking out a bridge. "Mollari, I must confess that I was surprised by your choice of the Vega Six system for our rendezvous point, considering itsunique positioning."

"It's neutral space, and far enough from Vorlon territory that I'm not worried about them coming here," Londo sighed, "And neither of us is stupid enough to be the idiot responsible for claiming Vega."

Vega was part of the Narn-Centauri DMZ, some seven systems too far from the center to be relevant for anything other than its jump-gate. Though technically part of the land not covered by the DMZ treaty, Vega continued to be in contention because neither side wanted to get saddled with it. Despite the fact that the planets of Vega were passably resource-rich with two habitable moons, the system was entirely impractical for colonization.

Due to its location on the border, were war to arise between the Narn and Centauri it would almost certainly include the Vega jump-gate as an early stage of it. And as it was too far from either side's supply lines, a victory would mean heavy casualties and an inevitable later defeat. The whole territory was poison.

Even if one of their governments claimed it, no colonists were dumb enough to put themselves in the crosshairs of ground zero for a Narn-Centauri war. G'Kar snorted, "Safety by virtue of impracticality."

"No safety for your game I'm afraid," The Captain took out another two archer tokens, seizing the the path to G'Kar's Emperor tile, "Two moves from check mate. I'm afraid you lose."

G'Kar clucked his tongue dismissively and moved a peasant tile forward, threatening the Captain's Emperor and forcing him to retreat a tile, "Are you certain?"

"Of course... no...how in the Maker?" The Captain's expression of victory slackened into outright disbelief as he examined the positioning of his tiles. G'Kar had drawn him forwards with easy victories, trapping him in position. He could not advance any of his pieces without putting his Emperor in danger, forcing a stalemate. It was the most humbling loss in the game.

G'Kar grinned and said, "Narn don't lose. We endure till the opportunity for victory."

The Captain, expressionless and deadly silent, stared at the board for a few pregnant moments before sticking out his hand and offering it to the Ambassador. "I would be greatly pleased to play you again Ambassador, I haven't had that interesting of a game in years, but my duties take me elsewhere at the moment. Good day."

G'Kar shook his hand and watched the Captain turn around and walk away. He stared pensively at the man's back, lost in thought, before muttering, "Another one I suppose."

"Another what Ambassador?" Na'Toth probed as she examined the plate of food in front of her, clearly skeptical that it would not contain poison. She poked the roasted bird with her gloved finger twice as though deciding if it was worth the effort of picking it up to sniff it.

"Change. This week has been full of changes. Changes in thought, changes in word, and changes in friendships are all around us," G'Kar chuckled and stared at Londo with his unnervingly red eyes, "Change is the most powerful force in the universe. One cannot resist it once it happens; it simply occurs. The world is changing around us and we have not even realized it yet. I thought he would yell, claim that I cheated,or threaten me. Instead, the Centauri captains takes his loss with grace. Wonders never cease."

"An oddly philosophical start to negotiations Ambassador G'Kar," Londo said, pulling at his jacket absentmindedly, "Will the entire negotiation be this obtuse and confusing? I could get you an encounter suit and you could speak in one word phrases."

"Ambassador Mollari, have you not seen them already? Small changes. A word different here. A common courtesy there," he waved to the crewmen setting around the mess, "The looks of hatred they're giving me?"

"They aren't giving you any look," Mollari shook his head, "They're hardly even paying you any attention."

"Exactly!" G'Kar nodded emphatically, "Here I am, a Narn Ambassador, a member of the Narn Kha'Ri. I command the Narn fleet surrounding them and they're more interested in their meal than they are with me. Centauri and Narn soldiers have started exchanging letters, chatting over the short range comms. Most of it is rudeness, bravado, and bluster, but we are actually talking, Mollari."

G'Kar wasn't wrong: there had been a great deal of positive communication between the fleet. Neither the Centauri nor the Narn actually liked each other, but a grudging partnership seemed to have formed. For that matter, Na'Toth only seemed to be staring at him with dislike rather than murderous intent, "I suppose it is good to have some change, is it not? Even if only for a little while. Even if total change is impossible."

"Ambassador. Our races survived the million little things in the universe that go wrong as a species. Our ancestors survived war, death, famine,and even each other," G'Kar tapped two fingers to the temples on either side of his protruding forehead, "The impossible happens every day just by living. Every day we draw breath is a small miracle. I had previously believed your people only capable of death and pain, suffering and destruction. But there is a spark of good in you, deep down in your genetic code. It isn't much, but it's a start."

"Thank you for your compliments; your gratitude is overwhelming," Londo rejoined caustically, "I'm giddy with praise."

G'Kar smiled and poured two drinks, saying "I never thought I would say this but...to peace between our peoples."

"To peace," Londo sipped deeply while starting out the starboard viewport, taking in the system beyond. The twin moons of Vega glistened with the light of the binary suns, "Yes... well let's see about solving another minor miracle. What to do about Vega."

G'Kar sighed, "Yes, the impossible does always end up being easier to solve than the impractical. I've told you already. We have no interest in taking this territory. We desire the Beta Alpha Twelve system, and you may have the Vega system."

"Bah! Beta Alpha Twelve is a populated trade route. We aren't going to uproot an economic hub," Londo sighed, "And I know you aren't going to give up the Xe'ros quadrant so I won't waste your time asking about it. Iam too old and too tired to waste my energy going in circles."

"Then why bring it up at all, Londo?" G'Kar sighed, "You know my government's perspective on the matter."

"Because, my dear Ambassador G'Kar," Londo smiled wide, "I'm not asking for the Xe'ros quadrant. Tell me, G'Kar, how would you like to greatly annoy both our governments?"

"Well, well, well," G'Kar grinned, his unnatural red eyes shining with amusement, "What do you have in mind?"

* * *

Talia knew that she was dead the second she touched the circle. She couldn't have said how she knew it, but she knew. There was no bright light, no choir, and no tunnel leading to the afterlife. With just a slight shift in pressure, the world no longer existed for her. Her existence felt narrow, almost compressed. She passed an eternity in silence before she opened herself to the world around her, seeing with her mind what her eyes no longer could.

In a swirling mass of colors and emotions she watched an Angel and a faceless man with a gaping hole in his left side tear out chunks of each other with swirling patterns of hatred and sadness. She watched till the battle became too bright and she hid within herself, pinning her consciousness to the ground as she felt the pulling of the great void beyond.

Then came patches, shadows, echoes of memory. She remembered the man of iron telling his men of granite to put her in the box. She remembered the room full of greed and sadness. She remembered the man of granite and the squire carrying her and the empty doll to visit the angel.

And then she was born for a second time. It all seemed too unreal to her when Zack had explained it, but not a word of it had been a lie. She had been certain. She died and was reborn in her own image. The warm weight of the hefty ruby that sat between her breasts pulsed with her own life and thoughts, her very soul.

She'd taken it off once to shower.

Once.

She'd gotten as far as walking from her bed before she felt the haze of death slipping over her, her control slipping into the void. It had been pure luck that she fell backwards and landed on top of the stone, or else she might not have woken up at all. She hadn't spoken of it to anyone, she'd been too afraid. It was all just overwhelming. Worse, the deathly visions she experienced when bound to the stone continued to haunt her. The real world was constantly at odds with superimposed images of spirits and nightmares, ghostly visions haunting her waking world.

She was learning to live with the phantom images that people carried with them: their guilt, their shame, their hopes, and their unfulfilled dreams, but she still found herself occasionally slipping into fugue-like states. She could will herself back into the real world a bit easier every time it happened but it was always a danger.

She would live with it, and she would overcome it with time. All things grew better with time. The most important thing for her at the moment was to try and keep going with her life as though nothing had ever happened. She was still Talia Winters and she wouldn't let anything change that or anything else, least of all a reunion with an old friend.

The CEO of "Future Corp," Taro Isogi, was a short man, though with his broad jaw and voluminous presence in a room one would never notice. She'd met him years ago, not long after graduating from the Psi Corps trade program and quickly found herself taken under his wing. She'd learned more about business in four weeks of watching his negotiations than she had in the previous four years of study.

She'd been surprised but deeply pleased when Taro had decided not to cancel his appointment with her on station, in spite of the recent difficulties. In his words, "I cannot imagine a better setting to convince someone that peace is the better option."

The conference room she'd rented in blue sector was gorgeous, if a bit dated in its architecture. The furniture was all squares and jutting angles, in keeping with the preferred esthetics of the German man responsible for the creation of the buildings floor plan. The view inside the room, though, was nothing in comparison to the view outside it. The skyline of the curved inner passage of the sector swooped around her, buildings rising in a wide circle on all sides.

Patches of green where oxygen-rich plants grew on the sides of buildings splashed bright color from flowers of all types imaginable, some growing wild where battle damage had let them escape their meticulously planned arrangement. It was perfect for their reunion.

Isogi, as always, entered the room just five minutes before it was scheduled to start. It was early enough not to be late, but late enough not to seem eager. "Mr. Isogi."

The man's broad jaw line arched into a handsome smile, "Talia! It's been too long. What did you think of my new Mars proposal?"

"It's like all your proposals: too progressive, too risky, and too costly in the short run," Talia chided, only briefly having to pause as she focused her vision away from a ghostly image of a laughing fox. "But if you can make it happen-"

"I must make it happen," Isogi interrupted as he gently shepherded Talia over to the door. She'd never quite figured out how he did it, but the man had a talent for taking over the room he was in without ever being pushy or rude. He was simply in charge and everyone seemed to instinctively know that was the way things were supposed to be. "Future Corp has to expand beyond earth. Mars is the first step."

"The senate won't like it," Talia shot back, tapping his chest with a gloved finger, "And the Mars conglomerate will try to bury you."

Isogi shrugged dismissively, entirely heedless to the risk. He'd decided it was possible and practical, so as far as Isogi was concerned there was nothing left to discuss. "I'm prepared for that. Now I need only convince Mars to share the risk."

Talia crossed her arms, "And if they won't?"

"Then the path to freedom may well be drenched with innocent blood," Isogi stared at Talia with sad, piercing eyes, "And a long held dream of mine will die."

The bright and tinny 'whoosh' of an opening door advertised the arrival of the third party of their debate, a handsome woman in a dark suit. Her face spoke of a hard life, aged before her time. Without preamble she walked directly to the CEO of Future Corp and offered her hand, "Mr Isogi, Amanda Carter. Mars Colony Business Affairs Committee."

Isoga took her hand and shook it firmy before waving behind him by way of greeting, "Miss Carter, this is Talia Winters, one of the finest commercial telepaths I've ever worked with. She will be monitoring our negotiations for FutureCorp."

"Miss Winters," Carter said, her greeting for Talia cold but not impolite. Miss Carter held not particular love of psychics but as Isogi had doubtlessly informed her of the presence of one prior to the meeting, seeing her was not unsettling.

"Please," Isogi said, leading her to the conference table. It was a tactical move on his part, a polite gesture to be sure but not without reason. By putting himself in a position where he implied that simple actions like sitting down or getting a drink were somehow "gifts" that he provided to his counterpart, he could continue acting as the dominant party in the negotiation. It was not "neutral" territory, it was "his" territory. The man was sharp as a tack.

"I read your proposal Mr. Isogi, " Miss Carter's antique briefcase opened with a snap of aging tongs and the shifting of old leather, "and frankly,you're either insane or a very brave man."

Isogi leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, "I can rather imagine that's what they said about your great grandfather John when he volunteered to pilot the first colony ship to Mars."

It was like watching Da Vinci paint. In a single stroke Isogi had managed to respect the woman's father, demonstrate that he knew more than he'd previously let on, and showed the resources of his company for garnering obscure information. Miss Carter froze for a moment, clearly processing the fact that Isogi knew that much about her family, before smiling and laughing. "So they did. Let's talk."

Isogi politely and docilly bowed for her to continue, "Please."

Talia sat down in her own chair, eager for the fireworks to begin. A negation with Isogi was many things, but it was never boring.

* * *

The Endless Bounty was not a ship of impressed workers or prison laborers and was, by and large, a safe place to live. However, only a fool would remove his armor outside of the barracks if he worked in law enforcement. There were crime lords, madmen, and saboteurs enough that even the most well liked of Osma's men didn't dare walk around in the lower districts alone. As the old joke went, "A man who walks alone in the dark walks with death beside."

But in the barracks, things were different than even in the most impressive of local precincts. All things considered, it would be easier to blow up the ship than to take the barracks by force of arms. None of his men needed to fear for their safety behind the safety of its doors. So it was behind the walls of the barracks that they laughed, joked and lived. It was well lived-in, and though lacking in creature comforts what it had was well used and well appreciated.

Osma liked his office. It was a comfortable, if spartan, space situated in the heart of the Endless Bounty within the central security barracks. It was a point of pride that he didn't live within some disconnected estate on the upper levels, though he could have easily afforded it. His place was with his men, guarding his ship and his people. It was home to him in a way few other places on the station could be for an officer of the law.

Beyond the obvious necessities of his office, the ancient marble desk withits ebony inlay, the hololithic display on the wall and a pair of wall mounted servitor scribes, his office also included an overstuffed chair and a small book case full to the brim with the writings of the saints and the Primarchs. His apartment was where he slept, but this was where he lived.

It was also one of the few places where he felt the Inquisitor and he could discuss the specifics of the so called "Butcher of Belzafest." It was Osma's seat of power, so any discussion of the investigation would be in his domain and under his authority. Osma wanted the Inquisitor's support and aid, but he needed this to be a victory for security and not the Inquisition. He needed that feather in his cap so that the Belzafesters could feel secure in coming to station security for help. The last thing he needed was for a substantial population of the Endless Bounty to decide that they didn't trust ship's security.

The Inquisitor arrived with remarkable punctuality, walking through Osma's door only a minute before their appointed meeting time. The man looked like hell. Osma hadn't ever considered what the aftereffectsof being caught in a blender might look like, but Hilder was doing a decent imitation of it. His hard face was covered in scars leading down from his cropped pate to his neck line, giving the merest hint that they covered his entire body, "Throne, Inquisitor... I know it's not my place, but are youhealthy enough to be doing this? I can't imagine that your body has had enough time to recover."

The Inquisitor smiled at him, bending a particularly angry-looking scar crossing his lips, "I suspect that whatever the Butcher has in store for me will be relaxing by comparison to the rest of my month. I'm quite looking for a morally unambiguous search for a murderer."

"Can you please stop enjoying this so much?" the woman behind him rolled her eyes in exasperation, crossing her arms in a way that emphasized her plunging neck line. It was the sort of shrewd calculation intended to distract a man, or the innocent gesture of a woman inexperienced in wearing the sort of fineries worn by the nobility, which would have only served to make the gesture more appealing.

Apparently his glace at her bosom was not covert enough to escape the Inquisitor's notice. He snorted in amusement and pointed to her chest with an ivory-inlaid, saying, "Miss Ivanova, you will find your current posture has a most...interesting side effect upon the dress the Lady Sáclair insisted you wear."

"Oh for the love of-" the scarlet haired beauty uncrossed her arms and yanked the hem of her shirt upwards, "How do women move in these things? It's not a dress, it's a pearl lined silk tea towel with a corset and bustle."

"Very carefully and deliberately, though it is customary to protect one's own modesty with a veil or fan. Though if memory serves, a particular apprentice of mine informed her servants that she 'isn't going to waste her time and energy carrying around ten pounds of feathers or chewing on lace all day.'" The Inqusitor chortled at the woman's murderous look, turning to Osma and motioning for her to sit in one of the chairs opposite the desk, "I'm sorry, Osma. How horribly rude of me. Allow me to introduce the Alliance Commander Susan Ivanova, my newest apprentice."

"Of the Babylon station?" Osma blinked, nonplussed. There was a whole mess of Narn and Centauri confined to the cargo bay, but he'd not realized that an Alliance human female had been brought onboard the ship. Someone in decontamination and immunization was getting sloppy,and he'd have to make a note of it. "The same who runs the station immigration?"

"Uh... yes," she tilted her head slightly, "Have we... have we met before? There is something familiar about your voice."

"We have, after a fashion," Osma tousled his long and braided beard, "Though only through translation matrices before now. You asked me some questions about the religious broadcasts we do regularly for ships in the area."

"Wait... you weren't the one who I talked with about the ships getting too close to the jump gate path, were you?" Amusement twitched the edge of her lips into the hint of a smile.

"I am not he. That was the ship's third in command, one Lord Sácomer. Though I must confess, the recording of that conversation has become a matter of much speculation for the translation experts on my staff. Were you specifically threatening to reach through the intercom and make him eat his own head if he didn't get our ships out of the way, or were you threatening to come over to the ship and do it yourself?" He had fifty silver thrones riding on the latter, and it would be good to just get the bet over with so that he could stop hearing about it at every meal time from someone or another.

"Not now, Osma," Hilder interceded, pulling one of the top reports from Osma's desk marked 'urgent.' He studied the paper, saying "I need an update on the Butcher situation. I've been out of touch for weeks now."

"I'd have thought you'd be all over it by now," Osma tilted his head in confustion, " The Belzafesters are vassals of your household, after all."

"Pardon," the Inquisitor looked up from the page, "They're what?"

"Uh," Osma sputtered, confused. How didn't he know? The man was a seeker of truth, for Throne's sake! "Inquisitor Hilder, the Belzafesters pledged themselves to you and your house until the death of Faust and all his works. They've already started stitching your personal heraldry into their clothing."

The Inquisitor growled to himself. "Sáclair seems to have let that particular detail slip his memory. No... Sáclair wouldn't outright ignore something that obvious. He knows I'd have his hide," Hilder sighed, "More likely he told Jak and Jak simply considered it pertinent to that specific moment in time. Never mind..."

"Does it change anything to know that?" the Babylon commander was looking at the wall mounted servitors in disgust. The pale torsos of two men scribbled on long scrolls of parchment with spidery limbs, keeping Osma up to date with the actions of his men. The woman, though, wasstaring at them as though someone had slaughtered a man in front of her. "Murder is murder and a killer is still a killer."

"Miss Ivanova," Osma said firmly. He had no time for some liberal-minded agenda confusing his investigation. "The servitors on my wall were made from a pair of men who made their living by pretending to sell upscale ships to the poor, before tricking their prospective buyer into standing in an airlock without a ship on the other side. Their punishment was justice served for evil done. Nothing more and nothing less."

The woman looked deeply skeptical, but held her tongue. The Inquisitor took the opportunity to shake his head and say, "What pattern have you found with relation to the killings? Is there any truth to this being a ritual murder of virgins?"

"Not the blasted virgin thing again. Ugh, if I had a copper for every time I heard that," Osma pulled out a thick binder of witness statements from a desk drawer, "If it's a man looking for virgins he's doing a piss poor job of it. Four of them definitely weren't and another three seem highly unlikely. It seemed like that was the pattern at first, but at first we were only speaking with the parents and community leaders of the victims."

"I definitely wasn't talking about boys in that way with my parents at that age or any age for that matter," Susan blushed slightly, "I can see how that would go wrong."

"It's worse than that. We have people organized into groups to travel with parents or guards to make sure that there aren't girls traveling alone. But this throne cursed rumor has managed to make it's way around the ship," The only thing faster than warp travel was the speed at which gossip got around the ship. If he ever figured out a way to convert gossip into fuel, the Endless Bounty would never need to stop, "And you know how teenagers are. Once they get a damn fool idea into their head it never leaves. Belzafest women are getting something of a... reputation... "

"Sleep with me so the axe murderer won't kill you in a dark alley," the commander parroted facetiously, "It's a hell of a line, especially if you believe it."

"There are worse reasons," the Inquisitor shrugged, "But I presume that the people foolish enough to believe that doing so will protect them also believe it gives them license not to take any protections at all."

"Got it in one," Osma grunted in disgust, "I'm all for faith in the Emperor but faith doesn't excuse stupidity. And we can't actually explain to these people that it doesn't help without essentially causing a riot for telling a group of grieving mothers that their children were less than perfect. Even then, there is no guarantee the damned fools will actually listen."

The Inquisitor nodded in agreement, "What precautions have been taken?"

"All that I can take without actually removing people from their basic patrol routes and guard duties. I've got people taking second and third shifts. Sergei has the Lionhearts patrolling the area, but they're soldiers, not investigators," The Lionhearts were helping the Belzafesters feel safe, which was useful in their own right. But a hammer is not especially useful for anything other than hitting a nail, and without knowing whom to smash they were mostly symbolic. "Though at this point, I'm just glad for the warm bodies."

"Any physical evidence?" the Babylon commander leaned over Osma's desk to get a better look at the map of patrol routes, giving him an unintentional look down her dress in the process. "Patterns, anything?"

Osma looked down at the map, ashamed for entertaining impure thoughts, "Er.. yes. But nothing especially useful considering how relatively well-used the paths he chooses for this purpose are. There isn't any discernible pattern to who is around for the killings, when and where. We'd thought that he was waiting for there to be a sporting event at the same time as a mass to have as few people on the streets as possible but the tenth girl didn't fit the pattern."

"You're joking, right?" Susan pointed to a large red circle on the map, "They're all happening within walking distance of this church."

"Miss Ivanova, it's not as telling as you might think. It's the largest church in the area and one of the most well used," the Inquisitor shook his head, "And it's an offshoot of the Skekkis order divinity. The priests are all pacifist eunuchs."

"Have you questioned them?" The commander protested exasperatedly, "At all?"

"Of course he has," He blinked at Osma's slightly bashful look, "You...you have questioned them, haven't you?"

"Shakut dismissed them early on in the process as being unlikely to be suspects," Osma chewed his lip, "They don't even eat meat. I can't see one of them being a brutal murderer."

"People lie Osma. Monks lie. And even if all the monks are saints in the waiting, the Monks must have an bishop and staff overseeing them. A corrupt bishop or clerical overseer isn't unheard of," Inquisitor Hilder sighed, "They have been questioned, haven't they?"

"Inquisitor, I think you forget the limits of my authority. I cannot question a member of the church leadership without special dispensation from the Archbishop," Osma hated that he couldn't question them without the dispensation but laws were laws. "I did all that I could without Al'Ashir. And I can't get his permission as his excellency has decided to convert the Alliance. It's a noble task but one that I wish could have waited two weeks."

"Well then, I suppose we're just going to have another go at it, won't we?" Inquisitor Hilder had the sort of manic glint in his eye that terrified Osma. It was the same look of purpose which Hilder wore for every interrogation of Nathaniel Sáclair. "I suspect he'll be a bit more... pliant for me."

"And barring that I can shoot him till he talks," the commander joked, "It's not like I'm bound to your laws."

"Huh, I suppose you aren't at that. You are purely within my jurisdiction," The Inquisitor clucked his tongue at the commander's look of absolute shock. "Miss Ivanova, you're under Inquisitorial mandate now. So long as I say you can do something, it is... what's the word? Oh yes, 'Kosher.'"

"Well, this certainly makes things interesting..." Ivanova said enthusiastically. A devilish glint shone in her eye.

"You may not shoot the Lionhearts, Miss Ivanova, nor anyone else in my employ," Daul sighed exasperatedly. "And no, I did not need to read your mind to know that."

"Oh, very well," The commander stood up and stormed for the door. "Come on then. Lets find me someone I can beat the living daylights out of."

Osma whispered to the Inquisitor as they followed her out the door, "Inquisitor, I believe I've just won 50 thrones."

* * *

The man had a name. It was a good name, one that his mother had selected to make him strong like his father. It was a name that spoke of his family's history and their travels. But he could not remember the name. The name was unimportant.

He wanted to know what his name was, but the red headed woman chose what was important. It was her job. So he remembered dying, the pain of decompression, the coldness of space. He remembered it over and over in a constant loop. He was long dead, or ought to have been.

He knew what it took to kill a man. That had been important. She let him remember that.

There had been a woman before, a place of red stone, and a cause. He remembered once believing in a cause, though that too had been purged from his memory. He might have found that frustrating if the woman would let him. But whenever he tried to focus on what he had been the memory would slip from him.

He knew it was time to wake up. Knew he was on Babylon 5. The woman had told him, given him orders. Orders were his life. Orders had to be done.

Kill the man Isogi. Kill the woman Carter. The woman... Carter... he knew the woman Carter... No. It was not important. The woman decided what was important and that was not important. He would kill them and then he would go back to sleep.

He would die again and again till he finally didn't wake up. He did not want to live. That was not important but it was his. He would kill them, then he would die.

It would end this time. That was important.

* * *

Booking Garibaldi quick passage to Mars had not been easy. John had to call in favors owed to him from the war to circumvent certain parts of the new quarantine procedures. He'd done everything short of just contacting a smuggler to ship the Chief to Mars, but raising no flags at all would have been more telling than only raising a few, provided that the Psi Corps was actually tracking Garibaldi.

He couldn't risk sending more than one man either. Helping an ostensibly traumatized friend skip a couple of security check points and a quarantine period could be explained away as simple kindness. Doing the same for four or five would be an obvious black bag operation, and he was in hot enough water as it was.

Not that he'd had much time in the past four days to spend too much time worrying about it.

"Honestly Dr. Franklin, I haven't got a clue what we're supposed to do in order to fix it," John sighed, "I don't even know if it can be fixed. Maybe they're right and this station is cursed."

"I don't know about that Captain," The doctor, looking less haggard and stretched than he had in days thanks to a full night's rest, was sitting across from him in his office, "I've transferred the patients who need long-term care to more permanent hospitals, and anyone else who was going to die from this is already dead. I'm not saying that it's not a tragedy. It's the worst thing I've seen in my life. But it's not the end. Life goes on and we have to go on with it."

"True enough, doctor," John smiled, "I suppose I need to start looking at the positives. Do you know what I saw this morning in the Zocalo? The shops were open. People were eating at the restaurants."

"They've cleaned out enough of the debris for that?" Dr. Franklin blinked in surprise. "I thought that everything was still on lockdown."

"Apparently security has been turning a blind eye on people working extra shifts to get the station up and running again," John sighed, "They're determined to build the place better than it ever was. As long as the unions are doing it of their own free will then I'm not especially inclined to stop them."

"Funny that you mention people working together. I wanted to talk with you about the Imperials," the doctor stood up and inserted an info crystal into the view screen. An image of the Imperials at prayer in flashed on the screen as Franklin spoke: "I realized something about them yesterday that's been nagging at me for a while. I just haven't had time to think about it till now."

"What is it, doctor?" The room full of pressure suit wearing imperials continued their prostrations on screen, getting on their knees and flattening themselves to the ground before standing and repeating the process. He recognized the space as the area he'd given Al'Ashir a permit to build his church in Brown Sector. Al'Ashir had been adamant that it be in a place where he might minister to those who needed him most.

"Kosh hasn't tried to kill any of the Imperials on the station, just the Inquisitor. And the only ship that the Vorlon ships attacked without provocation was the Endless Bounty," the doctor nodded as though it were supposed to mean something deeply provocative, "And even then he only attacked after the Inquisitor did whatever it was he did with the..." The doctor hesitated on saying the word 'demon.' It was not in his nature to fall to such superstition "... the entity."

"That's what he meant," John snapped his fingers, "Before he left Garibaldi left me a cryptic note saying 'More to Vorlon than meets the eye. Ship not Kosh's orders."

"Sir, we know for a fact that the Imperials don't use hyperspace for travel. They use something else. And the Inquisitor said that problems with the... entities... that live in the Warp aren't uncommon," the doctor crossed his arms, brow furrowed in concentration, "And we know that the Vorlons have some sort of hatred for the "third," whatever it is."

"You think that the Vorlons attacked the Imperials because they don't use hyperspace?" John nodded slowly in agreement. It wasn't entirely implausible. If the byproduct of using the Imperial method of FTL was attacks by creatures like the one that assaulted the station, he could understand why they would react badly to it, "But why the Inquisitor?"

"Captain. According to Delenn, even knowing how to do what he did carries the death penalty on Minbar." John froze. One of the immutable facts of the universe was that Minbari did not kill Minbari. It was one of the core values of their civilization, a point of pride which they valued above all others. It was why they'd surrendered at the Battle of the Line.

Dr. Franklin nodded in agreement with John's stunned silence. "Yeah, that's what I thought as well. It's one of three crimes that the Minbari Grey Council will kill you for without a second thought."

What are the other two?" John shook his head, trying to accept this new reality.

"She wouldn't say. It's apparently culturally taboo to even admit that this ever happened in their history," Franklin shrugged, "But it's apparently some sort of a "true scotsman" thing. No true Minbari would do it, so if someone does it they obviously aren't Minbari."

"That's some impressive mental gymnastics to get around to that,"John muttered. The Minbari had a unique talent for twisting whatever a philosophical principle said in, up, and around itself so that a simple proposition could end up saying whatever they actually wanted it to say. It was exhausting.

"Tell me about it," Dr. Franklin sighed, "But that's my point. The Vorlons were here to stop... what was it you wrote in your report?"

"Kosh used the words 'creatures of the third."

"Well whatever the Inquisitor did, it was considered to be a war crime by the Vorlons and Minbari. And to be honest, sir, if the Imperials are bringing those... things into Earth Alliance space I'm not especially inclined to disagree with them," Dr. Franklin rubbed his eyes at John's incredulity, "I'm not defending them. Christ no. But I do think that we need to remember that it wasn't the Vorlons who slaughtered the hundreds of people I have in the morgue."

"Enough," John ordered. Dr. Franklin was building up to some sort of a point. He was certain of it. "What do you want me to do doctor?"

"Captain, we've been very welcoming and agreeable to the Imperials. And I like them, I do. They helped Miranda and near as I can tell they saved us from that creature," Dr. Franklin used the sort of placating voice that only a doctor could use without it sounding patronizing: "But we know nothing about these people. When I revealed that they had human DNA, we relaxed a lot of the normal first contact procedures, but the truth is that I can honestly say I know as much about society of the Imperium of Man as I know about the Vorlons. We need to know more."

"And you would do that by?" John let the question hang in the air.

"Asking them questions, obviously. They're just as disarmed but us as we are by them," Dr. Franklin sighed, "But remember Captain, being human doesn't mean that your society is just. Hitler was human."

"It makes perfect sense to me," John nodded. "Do what you have to do."

Before he could go into the specific of the doctor's plans, the door to his office slid open, revealing General Hague and a small contingent of Alliance officers. John walked over to the General with deliberately practiced nonchalance as they marched forward with purpose, knowing all too well the purpose of the General's retinue. He saluted his superior officer and spoke with forced formality, "General, what can I do for you sir?"

"Captain John Sheridan," the general replied with a harshness John had witnessed before, though never on the receiving end. He had to remind himself that it was not, in fact, the General's true feelings on the matter. "You have received an order from Earthdome. You are to report to Earth Alliance territory to answer for your actions relating to the Endless Bounty."

A diminutive asian man with a crooked, broken nose sneered at John in disgust. Though he'd never met the man in person, he knew without asking that it was Captain Xingjiang. The man managed to sneer and grin without ever moving his lips from their neutral expression of hatred, "You will pay for what you have done to my crew and the Alliance, Captain."

"Stow it, Captain Xingjiang, or I'll arrest you for conduct unbecoming," General Hague hissed, rounding his glower on the Chinese man. To his credit Xingjiang did not wilt under the other man's gaze, though he did obey the General's order for silence, "Captain Sheridau, this is not a formal court martial. However, you have been appointed council in your defense."

If it was bad enough that the General had made sure he had a lawyer for an informal inquiry, it was obvious that the Senate planned to end his career even if they didn't plan to charge him with any crime. It was easy enough to do: embarrass him publicly so there could be no doubt for future administrations that he would be a toxic asset in command. Then promote him to irrelevance on some symbolic venture into deep space, or governing some irrelevant border colony. "I see, sir. May I ask who will be appointed to command the station in the Interim?"

"I will be taking personal command of the station," the General answered, and John let out a sigh of relief he didn't know he'd been holding in. If it had been Xingjiang or one of the other Captains with a personal grudge against the station, it could have ended in disaster.

"What?" Captain Xingjiang blinked in surprise, "Who will command the fleet?"

"You've been transferred to General Franklin's command for their expedition to the Shi'lassen Triumvirate," General Hague sat down in John's chair and smiled placatingly: "Don't worry John. She'll be better than new when you come back."

"If you say so, sir," John growled in a false voice of wounded pride. "I will be coming back."

His link chirruped. He tapped it briefly, saying "Lt. Corwin, now isn't the best time."

"Captain, you have a call from Earth," the officer replied from the CnC, "Shall I put it through to your office?"

"Yes, but inform the Senator that General Hague has taken command."

"General Hague, sir?" Corwin repeated.

"Do it, Corwin," John growled into his comm. It was bad enough to have to submit to the inquiry without having to repeat a simple order.

"Captain Xingjiang, escort Captain Sheridan to the Agamemnon," General Hague leaned back in John's chair, relaxing into the well-worn fabric. It felt wrong to see... anyone in his chair. It was his chair. Nobody else belonged in it, even someone who spared him a polite, "And for what it's worth Captain Sheridan, good luck."

John didn't really remember much of the trip to the ship as he allowed the marines to escort him to the Agamemnon. It was unreal, and he spent the whole trip trying to reconcile himself to the fact that it was actually happening. He was under arrest. He wore no chains, had been charged with no crime, but he knew all too well that he was a prisoner. He was imprisoned on what had once been his own ship. But not forever and not for nothing.

"I will be back." John promised himself, "I will be back soon."

* * *

Abbas was well and truly lost. He supposed it shouldn't be that surprising; even after having spent the majority of his life onboard the Bounty there were still wide sections of the Endless Bounty that he could no more navigate than the dark side of Holy Luna. But there was something decidedly infuriating about getting lost onboard a space station as opposed to a merchant ship.

"Come on, Abbas," he grumbled to himself, "You cant be that far away from Al'Ashir's church. Just find a map, all you need is a map. And you can get oriented again.

There was no up or down on Babylon 5. The whole station was built around the exterior wall, rotating to generate gravity. Skyscrapers shot from the curvature of the station, warping up and around his head dizzyingly. More than once, Abbas had needed to sit down after looking upward, for fear that gravity might give out and fly him into the groundthat he could just barely see in the distance. It just all felt too open, too exposed, too... well too alien for him.

No... it wasn't just the architecture that bothered him and put him off. It was the whole place. It was wrong, and evil. He knew that. He'd known that from the first day of his Tutoring. One can not trust the alien, for it is an abomination. He'd never understood the warnings about honeyed words or silver tongues though. The aliens one learned about in one's education were almost invariably the worst sort. They were the kind that churned men's stomachs and boiled their blood.

They were wasting their time with warnings about those. One did not need years of education to mistrust blood-soaked Eldar pirates. But to mistrust the smiling Narn who sold hot noodles from her tiny stall and always tried to offer him a free sweet cake when he passed was not one's natural reaction. The Xenos were interesting, even pleasant. And the Alliance never particularly seemed perturbed or endangered by their presence.

Quite the contrary, as he wandered the halls he saw humans and xenos engaging in all the sorts of mundane banalities one would expect from a ship's crew. There was something just disturbingly congenial about the Minbari book store. It looked too normal, too human. He would be glad to be off of the station when his father returned with the Endless Bounty.

Everything would be better then. He would return to the Endless Bounty with Kerrigan and they would go back to his regular life. He just hoped his father would return soon. The crewmen were getting too comfortable on Babylon 5. The quality of food and accommodations were not suited to the lifestyles of a nobleman, but they were palatial by comparison to some of the lower deck barracks after the damage done on Belzafest.

A pilot he vaguely recognized as being Imperial was chatting animatedly with an alliance man and his Vree friend, gesticulating broadly by way of compensation for lack of a common language in an apparent pantomime of a pompous looking Centauri man across the pathway. Yes, the crew were getting far too comfortable.

Life was easy on the Babylon station. Add to that the apparent ban on summary execution of lawbreakers and easy access to liquor, and they'd be lucky to convince any of the pilots to return at all.

Though there were some notable factors working in Abbas' favor, not the least of which was the Alliance perversity. Allaince humans were known to mate with xenos for recreation. Abbas gagged at the sight of an alliance man in an expensive looking suit exchanging saliva with a blue scaly something with tentacles.

Casual bestiality was not a selling point in their favor.

Only a truly sick mind would consider it. Only a... no! It was not worth thinking of, it was sick and wrong. Even the Primarchs were tempted by evil, even good men had impure thoughts. But a virtuous man could ignore them. Though the blue woman did have interestingly smooth curves and... no damn it he was better than this.

He rushed past a bar advertising the most exotic women in the universe and all but ran over a drunken woman as he jumped down two flights of stairs and ran the length of a corridor. He wasn't sure exactly what he was running from, but he knew he had to get away from it before something bad happened. If he stayed something bad would happen. The bad thing inside himself might fester and grow.

The passage was dark, damp, and crowded but devoid of xenos. Being near the machines was calming; it distracted him from his own worries. He shoved the bad thing to a corner of his mind as he meditatively ran his fingers along the front of what appeared to be a circuit junction was one that he didn't believe he'd seen before, a rarity for him.

Children learned to recognize onboard systems before they could talk on the Endless Bounty. Nobles were no exception; a noble could die just as quickly from a malfunctioning oxygen scrubber as the lowliest peasant. As his father would put it, "Privilege is no excuse for incompetence."

There were no words written on the outside but he knew the warning symbols of the alliance well enough to realize that it concealed a high voltage connection within. By serendipitous co-incidence, they favored recognizable yellow and black stripes to indicate hazards. He found himself following the yellow and black cable for lack of a concrete destination.

"Better to be going somewhere than back where I came from," he muttered odiously, "Far better." Never mind that he had no more idea what lay at the end of the corridor than he did what the cord was for, simply going anywhere felt like a drastic improvement.

His robes shuffled along the deck with a soft shifting of coarse fabric, only occasionally causing him to stumble as he walked. A lifetime of walking in trousers left him ill prepared for navigating the world in robes. Tuul assured him that it would take about a year to believe that he was, in fact, not naked from the waist down. How women wore skirts and felt anything but indecent was a mystery to him.

Jolted into action after a good ten minutes of silently meandering thehallway, following the cable in a direct path to nowhere, Abbas realized that he could hear a second set of footsteps in addition to his own. A slow purposeful clacking of steel-tipped shoes was skulking towards him, inch by inch.

Caught by an inexplicable urge not to be seen, Abbas ducked behind a large iron pipe, wedging himself into the narrow space between two support beams. He couldn't say what it was that set him on edge about the footsteps but something primal in him told him to run and hide rather than being caught in the open. Nothing good would come from those footsteps.

He held his breath and stuck to the shadows as a lean man with slick,neatly combed hair in a black suit and black leather shoes strode down the hall, muttering to himself. He fidgeted with the silver clasp binding a thin strap of leather round his neck, vaguely in the shape of the bizarre cloth nooses favored by well-to-do Alliance men, "No. No, he will be ready to listen."

Abbas tilted his head as a cricket-like hissing of air chittered out from the empty air, crowing in response. The man shook his head and argued with the blank air next to him, "Look, they obviously aren't getting them from us and I can't realistically see them arming those lunatics."

Another churlish hiss like curdled milk echoed in the black emptiness,radiating hollow anger. The man snorted, "I doubt he's going to want to talk with you either."

Two warbled chirps and a hiss and the man started laughing, "If you want to violate every one of the rules of the last pact, and face the wrath of the Fiallathandirelyignir without their aid - or worse yet, have to bear the entire responsibility for the culling, then yes, why not? No, we talk now before this goes any farther and they think we were responsible."

The voices hissed and crowed in the darkness in anticipation, clearly annoyed but not resisting his advice. A few pregnant moments passed before a massive shape shimmered out of the darkness, the massive armored form appearing from a blank patch of wall. The pulsating echoes of the psychic spell of invisibility sent purple puffs of smoke and steam into the air, revealing the object of Abbas' nightmares.

It was the Vorlon monster, Kosh Narenek. Abbas clapped his hands over his mouth, terrified that his own breathless silent scream of terror might warn the monster where he was. This was the beast that tore Inquisitor Daul limb from limb and sent his shattered body back. It would have frightened him less to be within arms length of of a hungry Tyranid Ravener.

"You're on time Ambassador," the man's silky voice clung to the air round him, somehow echoing with the hissing clicks of his invisible compatriots, "I hadn't expected you to circumvent your security detail with such... ease. But I suppose not all Vorlons have your skill for deception do they."

"A man who desires fire must bring a match," Kosh growled angrily, "Else find himself burned for his effort."

"Ambassador, we have every right to approach you about a breach of the old laws," The man crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, entirely heedless of the danger.

"Laws of the third are none of your affair," Kosh snarled.

"Calm down, we aren't here to remind you of your own inadequacies," He chuckled amusedly, "Or to gloat over your incompetence."

The Vorlon's wheezing voice hissed by way of angry question, the lights flashing confusedly.

"We're here over what happened last week in on the border of the twilight war."

Kosh froze, growling dangerously.

"It wasn't us, if that's what you think," the man shrugged, "But someone is out there going where no one should go, disturbing what should not be touched. Someone with power."

"The Awakened hunger?"

"No," the man winced, "No. They're still in hiding, and we still have time to prepare the younger races for what comes."

"No man can serve two masters."

The man pointed down the corridor, "I beg to differ. But this is not about the issue of ways."

"The ways are the only issue."

"Kosh, put the ways aside for a moment and think."

Fire burned around the Vorlon, "The pebbles cannot vote once the avalanche has started."

"And the song sings anew with the old tunes." The man pulled out a photo from his pocket, "With new players."

"If you see the candle lit the dinner was cooked long ago," the beast crooned. Abbas' skin crawled as it looked past him in thought, then back to the man, "Dances in the starry night scowl."

"The hour of scampering is long past Ambassador," the man turned his back on the Vorlon and waved, saying "The giver should be thankful."

"Mysterious movements only sing of what is known," the Vorlon shook it's broad head, "And what is foolish."

"Ambassador, it wasn't us!" The man backed away nervously, apparently only now realizing the danger of the Vorlon. The hissing voices chirruped with actual fear.

"You still miss the music for the song," The Vorlon's morose drone reverberated in the small space.

"Music is tangible, useful," the man shrugged, "Utility has value."

"Shall I ask a question of you Mr. Morden?" the simple phrase set the man stock still. He nodded unsurely, eyes darting behind him. The unseen ones stayed silent, whether in fear or curiosity Abbas didn't know,"What if the question is not the answer?"

"What?" The man blinked as the voices hissed in abject incomprehension.

"The departed are silent" Lightning balled into an furious corona above the Vorlon, "Go now."

"Kosh, the treaties forbid this." The man advanced brandishing his outstretched finger like a sword, "We have freedom of passage."

Kosh hissed, "Depart or I will assist your departure to the beyond."

The man raised his hands, palms up in a gesture of submission and smiled evilly. Turning on his heel with near military precision he turned back around and walked the direction he came from, giving a dismissive little wave of his hand, "I'll be seeing you Ambassador."

"You do not hear the song," The Vorlon turned and hovered away, briefly turning his red eye into the crawlspace to look directly into Abbas' eyes, through him. The Vorlon's voice echoed inside him, penetrating his mind, "You must listen. You must know what is to come."

And then, as though it were all some odd dream, Abbas woke with a start in his bed. Only the blinking of his chronometer and the dust on his shoes to let him know that it had been real. Throne of Terra, it had been real! He hugged his knees and shivered, knowing that at any moment the beast could be back.

What did he do now?

* * *

The imposing vaulted ceilings and marble buttresses of the cargo bay of the Endless Bounty only served to impose a terrifying grandeur to the otherwise barbarous nature of the Imperials, bright torches recessed high into the ceiling casting grisly dancing shadows into the cloying darkness. Monstrous paintings of human atrocities lovingly covered the walls, depicting the stomach churning brutality of the Imperial gods with loving care.

However, it was the real life brutality that disturbed Vir.

The corridor to the cargo bay from the outer passages was lined with spikes at eye level, upon which the severed heads of those caught stealing from the ship's supplies were placed as an example to would-bethieves. Freshly dripping decapitations sat side by side with the petrified and mummified remains of an unlucky cutpurse from six hundred years prior, smelling of rotting meat and sorrow. They left no doubt that the ship's security would carry out their threat of shooting any alien who ventured out of the cargo bay without authorization.

The prospect of a bullet to the head had its merits when compared to staying in the bay. Lacking either indoor plumbing or proper bedding, the vast emptiness of the cargo bay was maddening. There was never any silence, with the vastness and acoustics one was constantly bombarded with the sounds and smells of the collected sentients.

The Narn clustered to one side of a stone partition in the center of the room, leaving the other side to the Centauri with Vir stuck in the middle by virtue of his apparent authority. As intermediary between the three groups, by default he'd become the de-facto leader of the alien population on board the Endless Bounty. It was a position that had made him universally unpopular.

The Centauri hated him because he was neither sufficiently noble nor rich to order them around, the Narn hated him out of habit, and the Imperials hated everyone equally. But they continued to rely upon him, because nobody else wanted to step in and do it. It was giving him far more insight into Londo's bitterness than he particularly cared to have.

There had been a couple of disagreements between the two groups but they'd been limited to the sort of posturing and name calling in any stressed group trapped in a room. Lucklily there was enough room for them to spread out without feeling crowded, not that anyone was foolish enough to stray too far from their group.

One a day the Narn and Centauri would send a representative to speak with him in the center of the room and discuss what needed to be done, often the only time in any day someone would speak with him. S

Shamefully, he came to look forward to accidents and fights, as it meant that he would have something to do other than stare at the terrifying space around him.

Today was no different as a square jawed Narn sat before him, cross legged and scowling at the hovering skulls above. Every time one of them got too close the Narn would reflexively reach for the blade on his back, fingers eager to draw the K'tok, "Such disrespect for the dead. Can a soul never be at peace?"

"Yeck," Vir agreed, "Can we please talk about something... anything else, Ta'Lon?"

The Narn barked his grating laugh, his visibly scarred neck giving the slightest of hints about his smoky voice. "Not talking about them won't make them less there, Centauri. Truth does not go away because it is uncomfortable."

"It does not make it more relevant either," Captain Solaehos drawled aristocratically from behind a handkerchief, "These conditions are unacceptable."

The Narn growled angrily, "Much as it pains me to do say it... he's right. Oh they've fed us and saved us, but only just. And then they leave us locked in this," he waved to the darkness beyond the torches, "hell pit of a cargo hold."

"And the servitors! What manner of man does that to his own people?" The Captain was eyeing a shambling wretch of what once might have been a man wandering the cargo bay while aimlessly running tentacles along the wall, "What purpose could that serve that a robot could not to better."

"Jak assured me that we're only a day or so from the rendezvous point, then we'll be back with our own people," Vir swallowed in horror, "He is as eager to be rid of us as we are to be back with the fleet."

"Not too ready I hope," The Captain joked morbidly. It hadn't escaped anyone's notice that the exterior doors to the cargo bay they occupied could easily be opened out to space, "I can't hold my breath for more than two minutes."

"I'm more worried about what's inside the ship than what's outside it," Ta'Lon's bitterness could have curdled milk, "Did you ever figure out what the damned thing that took Fe'Ral and dragged him through that vent was?"

Vir shuddered, he could still hear the astonished Narn screaming in confusion. Learning a name for the creature hadn't helped quell his fears, "Officer Agarkar said it was something called a "Bendy." It's some sort of predator that sneaks on board Imperial ships and feeds off of anything and everything."

"I couldn't care less what it's name is," the ever practical Ta'Lon growled, "How do we track it?"

"We don't," Vir coughed, "If one of them attacks then we can kill it with massed firepower or explosives but they're apparently invisible to... well, everything short of psychics."

"Will they provide psychics for this task?" The Centauri captain was as eager as the Narn to be rid of the threat of the creature, "Anything?"

"They flooded the vents around us with enough radiation to kill it. The officer assured me that they found the puddle of its remains," Vir shuddered, "But if another one comes..."

"Another one?" The Captain brandished his handkerchief at Vir angrily, "How many are there? Why the blazes haven't they killed them all?"

"Why does anyone keep any predator around? There are worse predators on the ship, aren't there?" Ta'Lon growled in frustration.

"Yes." sighed Vir, staring up at the flying skulls fitting about, conscious of the evils in their construction. "But we already knew that."

* * *

Daul insisted she change into something more practical before they went to the cathedral. Eager at the prospect of getting out of the ridiculous dresses women of the Empire seemed to favor, she had agreed without thinking, only to have a gas mask and long cloak forced into her hands. The mask was uncomfortable and smelled vaguely of the ostrich the leather had so recently been part of.

She was not a fan.

Given the choice again she would have preferred to look like a courtesan than a relic from the First World War, but Daul was convinced that the additional intimidation of the gas mask would be necessary until she'd properly learned the art of being an Inquisitorial apprentice. And she couldn't exactly say no to Daul, much as she would have liked to.

It was maddening to despise the man and to intimately understand his thinking at the same time, to see the twisted reason behind his actions. She was never entirely sure if a thought was hers or a borrowed idea, which led to her acting intentionally combative of even his more innocent proposals. Not that Hilder ever had an innocent proposal; a polite greeting or an invitation to tea from him came with a price and a plan.

She had to admit, though, that she was grateful for the polarized lenses of the gas-mask when they walked through the doors to the cathedral, as the gold and polished silver reflected far too much light. Phosphorescently-bright torches burned brilliantly in hovering lanterns that spun in time with the massive, spinning, six armed clock. Susan nearly tripped over the knee-high lip of a gurgling fountain as she found herself staring at the clockwork cherub servitors, cybernetic constructs made from the remains of human children. They mended and tended the plants and flowers that hung in baskets and pots, laughing cheerily in terrifyingly regular intervals.

Following her gaze, Inquisitor Hilder snorted in amusement, saying "They're vat grown bodies Miss Ivanova. They've bred specifically for the purpose of working at the church." He paused, then added, "Well, some of them are donated by their parents after an accident, but only a madman would take a child for that purpose alone."

It made the cherubs less terrifying, but only by a bit. Susan shied away from the chubby-fingered infants as they waddled past her on their busy little tasks. Chief Osma seemed amused by her antics and joked, "I suspect you can take them in a fight, Commander. They barely reach your knees."

"Osma, your cyber-mastiff doesn't reach much higher than that," Hilder intoned dryly pointing to the bronze robotic dog at Osma's side. The mechanical canine silently plodded along behind them, lethargic but alert. Snippets of Dauls memory made it perfectly clear that a cyber-mastiff could eviscerate a grown man in seconds given the chance, "And I'm not inclined to be too close to it."

Osma reached down and rubbed the robotic dog's head with a calloused hand, scratching behind the ears as though it were an actual dog. "You'll hurt his feelings, Inquisitor."

The dog's shark-like gaze didn't especially appear hurt to Susan, just hungry. Then again, as a robot she supposed it wasn't actually capable of either one. They walked in past the atrium and into the main hall, a cavernous space consisting of several dozen rows of pews laid out in a circle. They surrounded the wide pedestal upon which a clergyman would stand and give a sermon. Only a few parishioners were in the chapel alongside some white robed monks, giving way to the sort of eerie, forced quiet of an empty church.

It might have passed for any Eastern Orthodox Chapel from the Tzarist era in its decadence and artisan craftsmanship. That is, of course, if the Eastern Orthodoxy had decided that it was aesthetically necessary to include human remains in its regular decorating. In addition to the normal sculpture and reverent tapestry which one would expect from such a space, hundreds upon hundreds more servitor constructs were built into the walls and ceiling. Some carried relics, while others whispered gastly chipper greetings to those at worship, but the truly terrifying ones hung in the ceiling. Swinging from an elaborate framework of shimmering cables, a choir of servitors dangled down above the parish, a mangled celestial choir to sing prayers to the cruel god of mankind.

It was difficult enough to sort out her own feelings for God without adding a third party to the mix. Susan scrunched her nose at the borrowed feelings of ambivalence and betrayal she associated with the god of Mankind as a man in a bright purple robe introduced himself to Daul. The priest bowed deeply, flashing a bald patch of flesh in the center of his head where an two headed eagle had been branded, before formally saying "Inquisitor Daul, I am father Czyar, Bishop of this church. It pleases me to see you here, though I must confess, I'm surprised that I haven't seen you sooner. Al'Ashir often lamented that you had yet to come to confession."

"My sins are between myself and the Emperor. There are ears even in places of worship, Father Cyzar," Inquisitor Hilder replied, politely but exasperatedly kissing the man's ring in deference. This was obviously not the first time he'd fielded this question as he continued, "I pray in my own way and on my own time."

"If you say so," the priest responded dubiously. He was clearly unconvinced, but chose to save the souls of Daul's companions rather than continue the battle of wills. "Osma, I know there has been no lag in your devotions. The chaplain in your precinct has actually complained of the rigor with which you follow the words of the saints," he said jokingly, before affecting a high pitched and girlish voice and saying, "How in the blazes am I supposed to be the authority on the Word of the Emperor when one of my Flock can quote the saints better than I can, and insists on correcting the most minor of interpretations?"

Osma positively beamed at the complimentary tone, saying "I am just a man humbled by the true word." He was so painfully straitlaced that it was a wonder he could put on his shoes. Anyone that stiff-backed had to risk splitting it two any time they bent over.

"But of course," he tilted his head, looking at Susan in an appraising manner, "I'm afraid I don't know you. Not a slight against your household, I'm sure; I'm just devilishly bad with names. Which parish are you a part of? I assume it's one of the Belzafest ones, since I have a rough time trying to get them to stick to the true word."

"My name is Commander Susan Ivanova," she announced, crossing her arms defiantly and pulling the six-pointed star from her shirt, "I'm Jewish."

"Jewish?" The priest questioned, shaking his head politely, "I don't know that parish, I'm afraid, but there are many new ones that I..." he cocked his head at her continued combative posture, "...Jewish isn't... my word, is she of the Alliance faith?" The Bishop looked at Daul eagerly, apparently thrilled at the prospect.

"Yes," Daul nodded once, "The Jews believe that one day a divinely appointed king will come to rule the world and bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth, though he has yet to arrive. The three largest religions are variations on that prophecy. They're monotheistic, but waiting for the savior's coming at the end times."

"Oh my, they're waiting for the Emperor and they don't even know it. They barely need any tweaking to synch with the basic Ecclesiastic doctrines," the Bishop smiled fondly and said with a slight shade of envy, "Al'Ashir must be having the time of his life."

"Whoah, whoah, whoah," Susan said, alarmed. This was not OK; she had been prepared for defiant rebellion, not mild amusement. The Imperials seemed determined to dismiss or ignore any religion other than their own, and her anger colored her words: "You don't get to just claim the Jews as being part of your religion. I'm Jewish, not..." she looked around the cathedral, "gaudy space Catholic."

"You will believe. It is the fate of all mankind," The Bishop dismissed her entirely as one might a petulant child, "Honestly, Inquisitor, we must get a missionary fleet here to correct this. It's entirely unacceptable."

"I hate to distract you from that noble goal Bishop," Inquisitor Hilder responded, pressing a button on his belt to mute the speakers in Susan's gas mask before replying, "But we're here to discuss the murders of Belzafest girls."

"Of course," The Bishop shook his head, idly resting his hand on the dais next to him and accidentally triggering a preset message of prayer from the supplicant servitor affixed to the pillar. Its grisly meat ground out ethereal prayers of lamentation, accentuating the alarming casualness of the gruesome worship, "How foolish of me, but I get into talking with parishioners and one thing drives out the other. Bad business with those girls, a terrible business."

Susan ripped the mask from her face and glowered at the Inquisitor, thinking hateful thoughts in his direction with a slight effort of psychic energy. The Inquisitor mentally batted away her probe, replying with a chiding reminder to control her temper, which only made her even angrier.

The Bishop, interpreting her look of fury as being directed at the killer, patted her shoulder gently, "You'll get him, Lady Ivanova. An evil man cannot hide from justice forever."

"No," Susan glared at Daul, "He can't."

Osma pulled out a notepad from his pocket and put pen to paper before asking, "Bishop, I need to ask you some questions about who came in that day."

"I told you before, Osma," the Bishop said, shaking his head, "This is a place of repentance and confession. I cannot tell you anything about who comes in or what they admit to having done. This is a safe place for sinners to seek forgiveness. I will not have you harassing people at prayer."

"Yes, you will," Daul announced coldly, unfastening the button on the holster of his pistol, "or I will arrest you under suspicion of heresy."

"Heresy," The Bishop balked at the suggestion, "Absurd, if you even consider harassing my-"

Inquisitor Hilder pinched his fingers shut, forcing the Bishop's mouth closed with a panful burst of telekinesis. "Someone is committing ritual killings; someone out of this cathedral. If you don't let me find this person I will assume that you are protecting the criminal and there is no law of man or god that can hide you from me if that is the case. However, I'm assuming that isn't the case. You're a reasonable man aren't you?"

The Bishop nodded emphatically, trying to open his jaw, "Mhh, fhhh."

"But of course," he said as he released the hold, "Now, what do you have to say?"

"I suppose it wouldn't harm things," the Bishop massaged his jaw, "if you were to talk with the monks. But there isn't anything to say. We have every priest in the parish tagged electronically to prevent them from being kidnapped by the Amon Sui. Whoever you're looking for isn't one of ours."

"Has anyone been around the chapel a great deal?" Osma grunted, "Someone strange, perhaps someone who obviously looks agitated or worried."

"It's hard to say," the Bishop massaged his sore jaw, "Throne, Hilder... you could just have left a camera without asking... I was very specific that asking was the only problem... ugh," he blinked a few times and rubbed the tears from his eyes, "Ugh... You should talk with Brother Helit. Well, everyone calls him Rik, but if anyone would know then it would be him."

The Bishop cupped his mouth and yelled to a robed man at the end of the hall, "Brother Helit, come here."

A wiry wisp of a man walked the room's length in record time before dropping to his knees next to the Bishop and saying reverently, "I serve in His name."

"Get up, Rik," the Bishop sighed, pulling the man to his feet, "He really is good natured but he's a bit slow. Sweet as you could imagine. Lived his whole life in the chapel, never even been outside the walls, and he's terrified of leaving the front door. Rik! These men have some questions for you."

"Need to light the candles," Rik hunched his shoulders and rubbed a thick patch of stubble under his chin, his crouched body language suggesting mental inhibitions, "Brother Wilan said to light the candles every day. Pray what nobody gets hurt."

"Brother Wilan?" Osma probed.

"Another of our order. He was Rik's caregiver till now. Died of blood poisoning at Belzafest," The bishop sighed, "The rest of us have been pitching in since then, but Rik was always like Wilan's son. He was making real progress under his care." He knelt down and looked Rik in the eyes, talking care to speak slowly, "Rik, these people are friends. What do we do when we meet friends?"

"Talk to them," With a thrilled smile Rik stuck out his hand eagerly, pumping Susan's in a bone crushingly eager grip before moving on to the other two, though briefly stopping to stare at Daul's augmentic fingers with great interest. When he'd finished the Bishop patted his back, saying "That's good, Rik, you did a good job."

Rik clapped eagerly at the praise. Daul cocked his eyebrow skeptically, asking "This is the best person to talk to?"

The Bishop shrugged, "Inquisitor, you could talk to every other person on the Monastery but it wouldn't accomplish half as much as just asking Rik. I swear, the boy has never forgotten anything he's ever heard. If someone was doing something strange, he'll remember it."

Osma looked Rik in the eyes and spoke slowly, holding up a list of dates on his pad of paper, "Rik. I need to know if anything happened on these dates, anything out of the ordinary."

Rik pointed to a date, "We got stucked to the middle of nowhere after a planet blew up."

"No, Rik," the Bishop corrected, "He wants to know about the church."

Rik pointed to the first date, "I got to bake a birthday cake. It was a good cake."

Susan greatly enjoyed the exasperated look on Daul's face as he continued asking, "Rik is there anything not related to food that you remember. Someone doing something strange. Something you didn't understand."

Rik chewed his lip then nodded, "Yes."

"Which of the dates?" Osma grunted, as kindly as he could.

"All of them," Rik pursed his lips, "That's when the two men with the knives go into the crypt and scream."

"What!" The Bishop spluttered, "Who?"

"Lord Gerard and Sir Malcom go down into the crypt with whips, knives, and chains." Rik nodded, sure of himself. "About once a week."

"Rik, why in the blessed saint's names are you only telling me about this now?" the Bishop groaned.

"You didn't ask." Rik clapped his hands, "Should I show you where?"

"Yes," Inquisitor Hilder pressed his fingers to the back of Susan's neck, spreading a warm sensation at the base of her spine. "I've temporarily deactivated the proximity sensor in the bomb, miss Ivanova. Stay here and look for clues; Osma and I will go arrest and interrogate the two nobles."

"What? Leaving me here?" Susan blanched. "You aren't worried about me running away?"

"Miss Ivanova you are armed," Daul said, then pointed to Rik, "and our witness is bloody well going to need armed protection if a noble realizes that a disabled priest is the only thing standing between him and freedom. Just stay with him for a couple of hours while we arrest them and arrange for safe transport. I don't want this man alone at night. Am I clear?"

"Yes," Susan sighed, agreeing with Hilder against her better judgement, "I understand."

"Good," Daul, responded, turning to Osma. "Get your men in position to make an arrest. I want to total dominance over them on Inquisitorial authority within the next ten minutes."

As she watched the two of them walk away, Susan tried to separate her feelings from those of Daul and realized, with horror, that her desire to see the guilty face the torture they deserved was not purely a product of Daul's memories. She held some of the same darkness inside herself. She closed her eyes, trying to purge herself of the deep ball of rage and hatred welling inside her. It didn't work, but at least the process helped her feel better.

"Come on, Susan, you're better than this." She wouldn't turn her rage at the world into hating the universe for having wronged her. So there and then, clutching the Star of David to her breast, Susan sat down and prayed. God might not be listening. He might not even be there. But Susan wasn't about to blame him for all the wrongness in her life.

Susan Ivanova would not become like Daul Hilder.

* * *

Talia loved watching Taro at work. Isogi wasn't a businessman, he was an artisan. He weaved words and feelings into a tapestry of logic that overwhelmed anyone he talked to. The impossible was made possible; the improbable became a matter of straightforward fact.

Yet his skill wasn't why she loved to see Isogi negotiate. Telepaths learned from a very young age that people cannot be trusted; it's ostracizing to know what people truly think. The parents of latent telepaths regularly get the first hints of their child's gift when their infant bursts into tears after the gift of a present from Santa. Her own parents got their clue after her pet gerbil "ran away."

Human society is predicated upon a collection of polite lies.

But in spite of that Isogi did not lie. Not once. Not ever. The man was scrupulously truthful. It was astonishing how something so simple was so entirely rare. This in turn only made his outrageous plans that more thrilling: "Mars has resources the aliens need. Now they, in turn, can supply an economic base that will enable the colony to become self-sufficient in ten years. You can win your independence without bloodshed."

Miss Carter chewed her lip in frustration, "It will be a hard sell with the committee. They'll need concrete assurances from the alien worlds."

Isogi politely looked to Talia for her opinion on the matter. The man was practically a mind reader himself; she could swear that she was unnecessary for confirmation of what she knew. Talia expounded upon Isogi's suspicions: "Not entirely true. You're pretty sure the committee will accept your recommendation, and you're the one who needs the assurances."

"Yes I do, Miss Winters," Miss Carter's mind flashed with frustration at having her mind read so overtly as she snapped, "Mars is being ripped apart at the seams right now. And before I bargain with its future, I need to know exactly whats expected of us."

Isogi waved his hand in a wide circle, gesturing to everything around him, "Naturally. That's one of the reasons why I suggested Babylon 5 for this meeting. All our prospective partners have representatives here, and we can iron out all the details satisfactorily."

Miss Carter shook her head incredulously in exasperation, contrastingly with the waves of amused satisfaction coming from her mind, "You actually believe you can make this work?"

"No," Isogi pronounced in a soft but meaningful voice, "but I believe we can try."

Miss Carter smiled and shoved the remainder of her printouts into her suitcase, "I'll speak with the business affairs committee. I think I can have an answer for you by tomorrow afternoon."

"Very good." Knowing that Taro would consider it bad manners to do otherwise, Talia stood up at the same time as Miss Carter and walked with the two of them to the door. The Mars representative, eager to be away from Talia, did not tarry long. After a few polite handshakes the door hissed shut.

Talia smiled at Taro's inquisitive look, knowing all too well that Taro knew the result before she spoke, "She likes the idea. She has her doubts but she basically likes it."

Taro chuckled paternally, "And you? Now that you've heard the details of my little plan, do you also have your doubts?"

"Frankly, yes," Talia interpolated nervously. She wouldn't ever consider questioning him in a negotiation but parts of his plan for Mars' independence were outrageous, "The financial risk is bad enough, but the legal maneuvering will be even-"

Taro raised his hand to silence her. Firm but politely he said, "I want to hear them." He smiled warmly, "Over dinner."

Talia laughed, "I'd love to."

* * *

David's eyes ached. Dex had kept him working for twelve hours straight before he'd been able to sneak off to Nor's hospital, only to be barred at the door by Nor with a hasty warning not to walk in. Bona had apparently opened her eyes for a few lucid moments and was with her parents for the moment in case it happened again. It had taken every ounce of self control to walk away from Bonafila, but angering Lord Enzo would potentially bar him from going near Bonafila to give her future treatments.

She'd opened her eyes. This called for a celebration.

It was night by the ship's clock when he reached home, too late to wake his father's cook. Nevertheless, he still planned to make a night of it. He loaded up a plate with pickles, cheese, and fresh fruit next to a thick loaf of brown bread, balancing it on a tray with borrowed pitcher of beer as he made his way to the eastern study. His mother would have skinned him alive for carrying the food down the hall without a tray, provided the Lady Sáclair didn't get to him first.

Not that there was much of a chance she'd catch him. It was night, and night meant that one or more of the concubines would be seeing to his father's needs. With the Lady Sáclair indisposed for the Lord's more active recreations by her intense gravity, his mother spent most of her time in the Lord's bed. No reason to risk the Lord's heir.

"No reason to risk his real son," David muttered bitterly. He liked the Lady Sáclair, he supposed, but David couldn't ever forgive her for being his father's wife. Logically, he knew that it wasn't her fault that his father fell in love with his mother after a marriage of convenience. He could remember his mother telling him as a child how Sáclair had come to her to find the love he couldn't find in a woman of noble blood, a woman who married for status. He'd sought her out after the Lady Sáclair's still birth thirty years ago. While Sáclair's other concubines were just dalliances that resulted in offspring, David knew that Sáclair loved his mother deeply.

It almost made up for Sáclair not loving him as much as he would love his true son, but only almost. A proud tapestry of his father standing on top of a shining moon leered down at him as he fumbled with the latch to the eastern study, "Open up you stubborn..."

David hopped on one foot, barely managing not to spill his meal over the floor as the door opened inward. Righting the tray, he scuttled over to a low table and plush sofa. With a satisfied "oof" of relief, he melted into the chair and stared in anticipatory glee at the far wall. A mirrored sheet of glass three meters wide and two meters tall concealed a tactical hololith, repurposed some three generations back by his great uncle.(twice removed) Instead of battle plans, the device had been programmed with a library of historical and fictional holo-dramas collected over centuries.

He took a swig of beer from the pitcher and was fumbling with the control for the hololith when the door opened and the soft footsteps of slippered feet stormed towards him. Irrationally fearing that it was the Lady Sáclair, he stood up and yelled, "I brought the food on a tray!" in a pre-emptive attempt to stop the hormonal rage.

However, while it was a Lady Sáclair, it was not 'the' Lady Sáclair. Ami, clothed in an uncharacteristically short dress that left substantially little to the imagination, stood behind the sofa with sleep-ruffled hair and a look of wild amusement on her face.

"I can see that," his sister snorted, suppressing fits of giggles behind her hand. She swallowed in an effort to quell her amusement, but burst into a second fit of laughter, "Throne David, your face... it was priceless. A tray? As though it the tray would be what angered her."

"Uuuhh," David stammered. The Lady Sáclair had recently demanded that it not be used in a fit of hormonal pique, claiming something about her fearing the noise might agitate the child inside her. But he wasn't about to let the bloated hag ruin his celebration, especially considering that the room was wholly noise proofed and signal-dead to prevent eavesdropping. Ami would not be especially receptive to that way of thinking, however. "Come on Ami. She won't hear it."

"That's not the point David," Ami shook her head, "I'm worried about you. You're not yourself."

"Come on, Ami, cut me some slack alright," David sighed. "This hasn't been a good time for me. What with the battles and..."

Ami poked his sternum angrily. "David Sáclair, don't you dare try that on me! I know better."

"What?" David blinked in confusion, "I don't understand what you're-"

"David, I'm not stupid. I'm not Carran or Arda but I'm not stupid, no matter what people might say about me," Ami said, crossing her arms angrily. "You've missed ten of your scheduled tutoring sessions in High Gothic. Lord Sácomer says you've stopped asking him questions about ship's systems entirely, and almost all of your training has turned into one long discussion of security measures on the ship. You aren't even trying to figure out how to become an officer any more."

David forced his voice to sound dismissive as his heart leapt up between his ears, trying to escape through his mouth, "Ami people just... deal with things differently...I wanted a change."

"David, there's change and there's outright stupidity," Ami puffed her cheeks in annoyance. "How could you do this to Bonafila?"

David's blood ran cold. How could she know? How could anyone know? Damnit, he hadn't been careful enough. A terrible vision of strangling his sister to death to protect the secret ran through his head, more nightmarish for its lingering appeal than its violence. "Ami, I don't know what you think you know... but it's not what you think."

"How can you be cheating on her! How can you be cheating on Bonafila?" Ami snarled. "It has to stop before she gets back on her feet."

David's attempts to fabricate an excuse for his heresy stopped flat footed as he tried to figure out exactly what she was talking about. In a voice of stunned credulity he repeated, "Cheating on Bonafila?"

"Don't you try that on me, mister. I know the look of a man with a secret and Arda isn't the only one who can find things out." She pulled a video still out from her dress, though Throne alone knew where she'd been keeping it, and brandished the still in his face. She pointed with a jewel-set fingernail at the figures in it. "You checked into the hospital with her after you had an allergic reaction to something or another; they sent a request for payment last week."

Stenatoda! She'd found a photo of him with Stenatoda. The bitch had used his real name when she'd checked him in to make sure he was tied to them. "Ami it's not what you..."

"Flox poisoning, David. I know what that means. I know how you get exposed to it, and what its a side effect from," She shook her head, "I understand needing a release, David, but you've overdosed on euphoria once already."

"Ami, I wasn't sleeping with her," David protested impotently. "She was just a friend."

"David, don't waste your time pretending," Ami sighed, "You don't do euphoria with someone who is "just a friend." And you damn well don't go looking for a woman dressed like that unless you're planning to misbehave."

Taking a swing of his beer and reaching for the remote, David tried to get his night back on track, "Look, you haven't got a clue what you're talking about Ami."

His half sister grabbed the control before he could and held it behind her, asking suspiciously, "Fine then David. Tell me her name?"

"Uh... well... I..." David didn't know her name, and an obvious code name wouldn't help his case any.

Ami shook her head disappointedly, "That's what I thought. Throne, David, you need to stop this now!"

"It's more complicated than that," David munched despondently on a pickle. "You... you just don't get it."

"No I don't," Ami pleaded, "So help me David. Help me try to understand what is going through your head right now. You've apparently been seen in the company of no less than fifteen women in various places on the ship, all of whom were in intimate situations with you. What is this? You can't have Bonafila so you have to have every other woman?"

"No...I'm doing it for..." What was he supposed to say? That he was doing it for Bonafila's welfare? That the only thing separating her from death was his betrayal of everyone he knew and loved? Ami wouldn't accept delivering orders for the Amon Sui as a reason for him to be in intimate quarters with so many women. In truth, some of them had offered themselves to him, a perk some of the Amon Sui women offered to their co-consipirators as a reward for continued faith, even though he hadn't accepted. But Ami needed a comfortable lie, not the truth: "I... I don't know why I'm doing it..."

"It isn't fair to her David," Ami sighed, "It isn't any more fair to her that it is for my father to call your mother to his bed on a whim or to send her away."

"You bitch!" David stood up, waving his pickle like a weapon, "Our father loves my mother!"

"Did I say he doesn't?" Ami sighed in a voice of forced calm, "But he chooses who do go to, and when. He chooses which of our mothers he wants at that moment, dismissing those who are inconvenient or ill. And we both hate it."

Tears welled in her eyes and her voice broke with emotion, "It... it isn't fair to her that you can just dismiss her or entertain yourself with any woman you want in the meanwhile. She's my friend, David. It isn't fair that you can do this to her. That you can just use her."

David walked over to her and hugged her as she cried into his shirt. He couldn't bear to see one of his sisters in pain. "Ami... it's OK! Please stop crying."

"It's not OK," her lips quivered, "It's not OK. Just... just promise me you won't use my friend. Promise me."

David, entirely baffled by the train of conversation, hugged her close and looked her in tear soaked eyes before announcing: "Ami, I have never loved a woman the way I've loved Bonafila. She is the light of my life. I promise you I will never do anything to hurt her again."

Ami sniffled a bit, but nodded, "Ok."

"Ok. Now I'm going to watch something pointlessly violent, drink my beer, eat, and celebrate," David said, wiping the tears from Ami's cheeks with his pocket handkerchief, "Because today is a day to be happy, not sad. We're alive. Bonafila is getting better. All is well with the universe. You can join me if you wish."

"Ok," Ami flopped down into the sofa and offered the remote, "But I want to watch something with Space Marines."

David smiled. "You read my mind."

* * *

"You're quite certain that this device can produce the power output I require? One that has not been touched by the hands of xenos?" Kerrigan towered over the shopkeep, a portly woman from the Alliance home world, "It is an issue of religious purity. We would not consider installing an machine made by unclean hands."

"Ma'am, my stuff was made in the USA. Good old fashioned elbow grease, and some General Electric know-how are what made this," she smiled in apparent approval of Kerrigan's request. "It'll power a Starfury, I guarantee it."

"Good! Have four of them sent to the Imperial bay." Kerrigan pulled four sizable gold coins set with thumb sized rubies from her purse, saying "I presume this will be sufficient payment."

"Jesus, lady? Are those things freaking real?" The woman drooled at the sight of the gems. "Tell you what, I'll toss in a couple of antigrav loaders for free."

"That should be acceptable," Kerrigan nodded to her guards. "Come. I have more parts I require from other shops."

Freed of Mr. Garibaldi's exile on the condition that she neither harass the xenos nor attempt to modify any systems, Kerrigan had taken to wandering the station in the wee hours of the station's time. She did not require sleep except for the direst of injuries, giving ample time to explore. Provided, of course, that she agree to be accompanied by a bodyguard.

Kerrigan adored the Babylon station, heresy though it was to say so. The Alliance station was entirely unpretentious, almost innocent, corrupted horribly by virtue of their humanity. The Alliance security officers assigned to "keep her out of trouble" still had the weight in their cheeks that could only come from generations of easy living. They held all the bluster of soldiers but none of the humility that came from actually participating in battle.

Admittedly, her relaxation was greatly aided by the plasma syphon concealed on her person. Anyone who tried to use an energy weapon within ten paces of her would fire wildly off course as their shot dissolved under the curious sciences of the Ulmethii. It was easier to appreciate dangerous men when they were no danger to one's person.

However, the most shameful joy she got from the station was her proximity to so many xenos without having to go through normal channels. Kerrigan's true love was the study of xenotech sciences, and until her exile from her position on the Oita Forge World she'd been the world's pre-eminent scholar of xenology and xenobiology. It was a necessary study for the Imperium, but primarily a tactical one. The Administratum wanted to know how to defeat xenos races; learning from them was purely coincidental. Their technology had to be vetted, tested, and probed by every Forge World from Mars to Ryza before it would even be considered as an acceptable technology.

The Adeptus Mechanicus were, by and large, content to accept that xenos-created technologies were impure, and thus unusable. Unfortunately for her, Kerrigan was a woman beholden to logic. It made no sense to her that the Omnissiah, a god of knowledge and learning, would arbitrarily come to the conclusion that Imperial technology ought to be inefficient.

If the Tau had learned how to create plasma weaponry that did not explode, it was a betrayal of the Omnissiah's message to not learn its secrets for the betterment of the Imperium. She created a prototype using a reverse-engineered version of the pulse rifle, only to be exiled for her trouble.

Had the rifle not been designed for Inquisitor Daul Hilder, they would have made her into a servitor. She owed her life to him. This second exile was a small price to pay for his survival, considering the perks.

"Ma'am," Mr. Zack Allan interrupted her introspection worriedly, "you might want to get moving."

"No, thank you officer," Kerrigan perused a display of historical dramas depicting the history of Earth, trying to decide which of them would be the best to start learning their history from. So many of the holo-dramas seemed to contradict the historical records that she was beginning to wonder if the actors even read them. "I have more items that I need to purchase before I retire."

"I'm sure you do, ma'am, but I'm pretty sure I see... damn, she's coming over here," the Marine groaned. "Don't say I didn't warn you ma'am."

Kerrigan looked over her shoulder at the person Mr. Zack Allan was scrupulously trying to avoid catching the eye of, a severe looking white haired woman in a green suit emblazoned with the letters "ISN." The woman was followed by a small cadre of men shouldering thick black devices with glass lenses on the front, presumably cameras. "Should I know her?"

"Merciful Christ, she's seen you," Private Clémont sighed. "Why in hell didn't anyone tell us there would be one on station?"

Kerrigan pinched the bridge of her nose, "Will one of you please explain what you're blathering about?"

The woman, brandishing a black baton with a bit of foam on the end, walked across the hall and directly to Kerrigan without preamble. Her cadre of men with their curious devices followed her silently, capturing her image from every possible angle in an astonishing display of vainglory.

"Lady Kerrigan, the people of Earth would like a word with you." Damn, the woman was doubtless some sort of Alliance royalty. She likely wasn't the good kind either, as few competent rulers were so vapid as to refer to themselves in the third person.

"I am busy at the moment." Kerrigan picked up a data chip from the stall next to her, examining it with a probing mechandrite. One of the nobewoman's cadre focused on her probe in obvious interest. Kerrigan ignored it; no reason to get the fool whipped for losing focus. "Is this pressing?"

"The truth is always pressing Lady Kerrigan," the woman continued, unabashed. "We have many questions for you."

"It is Magos Frist. I do not know you well enough for you to take that liberty." Kerrigan lifted herself off the ground with her mechandrites, adding another half meter to her height and the distinct impression that she was floating above the noblewoman. "Ask your questions so that I may be rid of you. I will answer all that do not violate the law or my conscience."

"Magos Kerrigan," the woman swallowed nervously, unaccustomed to this level of proximity to an augmentically altered person. However foppish she was, the woman had backbone. "The arrival of the Endless Bounty has caused an uproar in the past three months. Your nation joined the Leauge of Non-Aligned worlds in record time after first contact. But we know so little about you as a people: first and foremost, am I correct in saying that you are genetically human?"

"Yes," Kerrigan sighed, annoyed at so obvious a conversation. "Your own doctors confirmed that beyond the shadow of a doubt. We are human."

"I hope you don't take this the wrong way... but you don't exactly look like any human I know," the woman politely jibed.

"I've had some upgrades installed for the purposes of improved functionality," Kerrigan laughed mechanically, "but there are a few bits of human here and there."

"Fascinating, we haven't gotten the hang of that yet, I'm afraid." The woman pulled a device out of her bag. The device, obviously some sort of pict-corder, showed a small video of the Ogryn Galut protecting infants from demonic incursion. "And this man? Is he human as well?"

"I'd wondered how he'd managed to get those scars," Kerrigan said with interest, taking the device with one of her tentacles. "The boy had more fight in him than I'd realized. I'd though Cairn had lost his mind when he paid a hundred thrones for him."

"Paid," the woman interposed in confusion, "He's a slave?"

"Of course he is. He's an Ogryn." Kerrigan nodded, "Though 'indentured servant' is a closer translation. Galut is an... the word we use doesn't translate well... 'near human' …'altered human' ...no, 'abhuman.' He is genetically similar, however due to genetic modification and natural evolution he is disparate enough that the people from his home world can no longer breed with pure-blood humans."

"And there are other 'abhumans' in the empire?" She pulled out a photo of Vira'capac sharing a meal with the pak'ma'ra, asking "Ones who do not share the physical similarities?"

"No," Kerrigan laughed, "The Kroot is most decidedly not human... at all. But there are numerous abhumans in the Empire."

"And are they all slaves?" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Ah, now the woman's fear made sense. She was afraid that the genetic variations of the Alliance would condemn them to slavery. There was no need to frighten the woman of the coming Imperium; it was best to help her look forward to it.

"Of course not," Kerrigan shook her head, "The Imperium is just too large for any one type of abuhuman to be universally anything. Galut is one of many Ogryn; what applies to him is not universal. The Navigators are in a place of esteem, since we could not travel the stars without them."

"One of them was part of the initial greeting party," the woman nodded pensively, "The one with three eyes."

"Yes, that was Navigator Zorn Calven," Kerrigan raised her hand, willing a small hologram of him into life. It spun in place with a lifelike imitation of the man's insufferable sneer as she continued, "They are the ones capable of seeing the currents of the warp. They are the ones who make space travel possible."

"The warp," the woman nodded eagerly, "The alternative to hyperspace your people use. Yes, tell us about that."

"I apologize madam," Kerrigan sighed, "But that is not information I will share with just anyone. Even a the simplest forays into warp science can, and do, result in disaster without proper caution."

"Disaster like what happened on Babylon 5 you mean," The woman asserted, "There are certain people who are questioning if the timing of this so called "daemon" attack was more than a co-incidence. It has even been implied that the imperials had something to do with unleashing it."

"Preposterous," Kerrigan laughed at the very idea of it, "The Inquisitor does not consort with demons, nor does he summon them for his own purposes."

"Then why did the Vorlon confront him after the fact?" The woman pressed the baton towards Kerrigan's face, asking imperiously, "How did you destroy two Vorlon warships?"

"I have no intention of..." Kerrigan trailed off, staring at a blonde man weaving his way through the crowd. Her eyes, modified years ago with augmentic upgrades, saw what no other mortal could: a fine halo of energies that could only be associated with concealed augmentic weapons, "I apologize, but you're quite sure that Alliance human's don't have augmentic machines installed the way I do?"

"Positive," the woman smiled incredulously, "Magos, you didn't answer my question."

"Be silent, you fool," Kerrigan hissed, "I don't want him to know that I've seen him." Kerrigan brushed past the woman, tapping her finger on her lips for silence. The security officers, wary of her aggressive posture, followed her closely and reached for their side arms.

"Kerrigan," Mr. Zack Allan hissed plaintively, "What are you doing? She isn't going to just stop following you because you confused her."

"Mr. Zack Allan," Kerrigan hissed in a quiet whisper, "I am correct in my assumption that someone sneaking military grade weapons on to your station merits your interest?"

"Damn," the officer unholstered his pistol, "Where is he?"

"Not sure... no, wait," Kerrigan stopped at the end of a hall, using her enhanced augmentic senses to listen for the cyborg. However the only sounds she heard were of an amused human couple walking arm in arm down the hall.

"I've never seen you so excited about a deal before," the woman laughed amusedly as Kerrigan placed a name with the face. It was the station's sanctioned psycher, Talia Winters.

Her date, a man of middle age chortled, "It's not just a deal Talia. It's a step into the future. Mars can be the beginning of a whole new life for the human species. It's as it was meant to be."

Kerrigan hissed "now" and sprinted down the corridor as she heard a third set of footsteps moving from the shadows of an alcove. The tall, blonde cyborg approached the couple deliberately and stared into the man's eyes with pure hatred. He screeched in a hoarse whisper, "Free Mars!"

His hand covered in a coruscating blue lightning as he reached out to grab the man. Before Kerrigan could close the distance and grab him Miss Winters tossed herself between the man and his attacker, taking a lethal blast of lightning to the chest. Blue bolts of energy cascaded across her body, twisting and crackling in absolute lethality.

Kerrigan wasn't sure if the woman or her attacker was more surprised when the crackling energies siphoned into the blood red stone between the woman's breasts, leaving her shirt in tattered scraps but the woman otherwise none the worse for her troubles. The woman screamed and in a purplish haze of psychic discharge heaved the man into the wall.

"Security! Stand down!" Mr Allan unholstered his weapon, searching for a clean shot at the woman's attacker but finding none, "Come on, come on, I just need a shot. Get out of the way Talia!"

"Talia!" the man bellowed in apparent terror for his companion's wellbeing as the cyborg flipped to his feet and lunged for the woman again, brandishing a knife in his hand. The woman grabbed the man's hand at the wrist, freezing him in place with a telepathic suggestion.

Kerrigan bounded across the hall, ducking into a roll to come up behind the cyborg. Powerful augmentic tendrils wrapped around the cyborg, binding him and pulling him from the woman. No longer in direct contact with his telepathic opponent, the cyborg attempted to fight for his freedom. Blue bolts of lightning dissipated harmlessly on her insulated augmentics.

Sick of the creature, Kerrigan punched through it's chest and tore out the creature's heart, then twisted her mechandrites and broke the arms and legs for good measure. The discarded corpse spurted a thick puddle of blood as it collapsed to the floor as she muttered, "Disgusting thing."

She noticed with some surprise that the noblewoman had apparently chosen to follow them rather than shy from the battle. She turned to her cadre, panting and bent over from the effort of running in her high-heeled shoes, "You got that, right? Tell me you got that?"

Miss Talia Winters groaned in frustration from the deck before sitting upright and ashamedly covering her chest. A hand print had been burned through her clothing down to the naked skin of her chest, but her skin was impossibly unburned and unscarred.

After having called in the incident to security, Mr. Zack Allan bent down next to Miss Winters, taking the black and white checkered cowl offered to him by Kerrigan to cover her modesty. "You OK, Talia?"

"I... I think I'm fine," Talia looked at her companion in bewilderment. "I'm totally fine."

"That you are alive at all is wildly improbable," The Miss Winter's companion companion hugged her tightly to his chest, "But he should not have gotten this far at all with those weapons. It is inexcusable."

"Look, I feel your pain," Officer Allan sighed exasperatedly as he holstered his weapon and helped Talia to her feet. He nodded to a small cadre of security officers who arrived to secure the scene, saying "I didn't even know that someone could hide a lightning rod in their arm. We search everybody on station for what we can. Sometimes they get through the net; I'm just glad we caught this one. "

"Then we shall have to amend that," Kerrigan fished about in the creature's innards, examining the circuitry within. It was a hack job if ever she saw one, the sort of work one got from relying upon backwater Mechanicus washouts and technological autodidacts. Every component designed to work in the short term, and even then not particularly well. Annoyed, she muttered "I won't allow those of us exiled to the station to be endangered by naive Luddites. Honestly, not catching a cyborg at the door? How you haven't been conquered already is a mystery."

The noblewoman pointed the baton at her again, prompting Kerrigan to briefly entertain fantasies of making her eat it in punishment for her rudeness, "What do you plan to do in order to "amend it," Magos?"

"By upgrading the station, obviously," The Magos shook her head in disgust, "Now go away, you supremely irritating woman. I have to go meet with Captain Sheridan."

The woman moved out of the Mago's way as she waved a blood stained augmentic claw at her, but would not be assuaged from her inquisition, "What do you think of the Captain's duties on Babylon 5 in the light of his apparent failures as of late."

Kerrigan shouted over her shoulder as Mr. Allan barred the noblewoman from following them into the lift, "I think that anyone who views slaying a demon and surviving invasion as a failure has taken leave of their senses."

* * *

Sørian did not like being summoned to the great hall even when it was done with the pomp and ceremony someone of his noble blood deserved. Being hurried to the throne's judgement like some common strumpet was entirely unacceptable.

The Lionhearts hadn't announced themselves to his footman or knocked on his door. They had no need for either. Their authority allowed them to enter any room of the ship without warrant or permission. So it was that Sørian had been interrupted mid-coitus with a summons to arrive at the great throne in thirty minutes.

Thank the Gods that they hadn't come two minutes later, or they would have caught him mid sacrifice. Sørian was a good liar but even he couldn't imagine a plausible reason for someone to be fornicating with a recently slaughtered corpse covered in demonic sigils. Tzeentch alone knew how to pull that one off.

He wasn't even entirely sure which of the Lionhearts they were. Apparently vowed to silence and secrecy in their mission, they'd covered their faces and heads with wide turbans that matched the silk cloth of their robes and concealed their identities. Sørian vaguely knew that the largest of them was likely Hamman or Danzig, since Sergei walked with too much pride in his shoulders for it to be him. Not that he could do more than guess, as even their voices were distorted by breathing apparatus beneath the silks.

He hated feeling underdressed by comparison to his escort: he'd hardly had the time to slip into a simple silk and eagle feather tunic with a lace frock before they'd hurried him out the door. If he survived this he'd never be able to live down the shame of looking like some merchant son of a dock worker. Intolerable, it was entirely intolerable.

He could crush these fools with a spell and a wave of his finger, but to do so would damn him. He was powerful. but not powerful enough to overwhelm the entire ship, especially without the aid of his patron god of excess. No, he would bear the indignity - for now. Revenge, sweet revenge, would come later to all those who insulted and opposed him. By the Gods, it would come.

They had no proof. They could have no proof, not yet. If they had proof they would have shot him, not brought him to Sáclair... but why? What could this be about? Why could they need him?

The great hall was relatively empty at this uncivilized hour, its normal crowds likely at home finishing their evening meal rather than plodding about on some fool's errand. A few lesser nobles stood around chatting pleasantly, doubtless meeting in anticipation of a night's revelry. Lacking adequate quarters of their own, they would be forced to make do with some commercial venue for their entertaining. "New bloods are as bad as peasants, I swear," Sørian muttered to himself.

The Lionheart to his left shot him a murderous look, displeased to be in close proximity with Sørian. Perhaps he'd ordered the man whipped as a child, possibly even hunted him. Few of the duct rats he'd hunted escaped alive, or sane. Osma's fools never even came close to finding Sørian, though the officers had been more than glad to hunt his patsies. The cultist's lip quirked in amusement at the fools protesting their innocence.

Who knows, perhaps some of them were even deserving of their public crucifixion. He'd certainly found their screams worthy. Bolstered by the happy memory, Sørian whistled an amused tune as they led him to a levitating marble platform.

"Get on," the big Lionhearts sandpapery voice echoed through his vox-caster. He made no motion to follow Sørian.

"Er," Sørian stammered, worried. Getting on a levitating platform by himself felt like an especially bad choice. Just because the Lionhearts did not shoot him didn't mean Sáclair wouldn't. He'd done so before to several mutineers, two murderers, and a particularly offensive minstrel, "Are you quite sure he wanted me, Sørian? Not the Sabian or Sural household?"

"Look, the Captain is waiting for you," The large man cracked his knuckles, "Are you going to get on or do I have to help you on?"

Sørian's flash of range quelled almost instantaneously as he caught sight of a plasma turret in the ceiling tracking a floating servo-skull. Not here, not now, it was not time. "I suppose there's no time like the present."

Sørian strode forward onto the platform and felt distinctly sick as it rose into the air. There really ought to have been a guard rail or a chair or something, anything really, to stop its occupant from being in constant fear of the edge. One wrong step, one subtle slip, and the rider would fall to the ground and die. Of course, that was probably its intention when one of the brutal ancient Lords Sáclair commissioned it.

As the Captain's ornate throne and kneeling concubines came into view in all its vainglorious luster, Sørian could not help by seethe with envy. The casual opulence and sheert dismissive immoderation of the Captain was enough to shame the Keeper of Secrets Bal'shag'kebet. It was a shame that the only god Sáclair truly prayed to was himself, since the brutality and arrogance of his household might easily have meshed with the prince's whims.

With the merest of deferent nods Sáclair greeted him neutrally, "Sørian, my good man, it's been too long since we've spoken. How are you?"

"It has only been six months since my last summons," he responded. Six glorious months! "And I did not mean to impose."

"Six months," Sáclair tutted, "How time flies, how much has happened. How much you have changed." The man pulled out a standard issue Adeptus Arbities pistol, "How we all change."

"I have no idea what you're speaking of," Sørian answered, clutching a small pouch in his pocket. Inside was a prepared spell of protection that ought to save him long enough to jump off the platform without harm. "I'm the same man I always was."

"Are you?" Sáclair twirled the pistol on his index finger, sipping his mead out of a great flagon. "I hope not. I remember you being a self-centered, egotistical, selfish, useless fop."

Blood boiled in Sørians' ears. He'd spent years building up his persona to conceal his extracurricular proclivities, but even his person was not deserving of this rudeness. Quelling the urge to strike the man down with warpfire, he replied in a slow dangerous tone, "I beg your pardon?"

"Calm yourself, Sørian," Sáclair laughed in jovial commiseration, much to his compatriot's bewilderment. "My assumptions were recently proved incorrect. You are to be trusted."

"I am," Sørian blinked in total stupor, "Of... of course they were. Of course I am... but why?"

"Sørian, I am this ship. My children are an extension of me, never more than an inch away from the skin of the Endless Bounty," He smiled politely, "All my children - well all my true borns anyway - all of them are implanted with tracking devices at birth. I know where my daughters are at all times. I know when they are doing something foolish. They are never alone, even when they believe they are."

Sørian's blood rushed to his ears and a feeling of abject dread came over him once again, "Captain I don't know what she told you-"

"Not a thing," Sáclair shrugged, "Nor do I suspect she will. But I do not need her account of the matter. She was followed by a servitor skull at a discrete distance. I know exactly what happened. I watched you save my daughter."

"It... It was the least I could do," Sørian whispered in shock. By the gods, it was a miracle he'd turned down Hexathelidae's suggestion to murder her or bed her in the street, "I.. I... she asked me not to tell you."

"As your Captain I'm annoyed that you chose not to, but as a father I appreciate your loyalty to my daughter's wishes. I am cognizant that you chose to risk the death penalty at Osma's hand rather than embarrass her publicly," Sáclair sighed. "You will be getting a full pardon for acting on behalf of my daughter in this. I have no intention of shaming Ami for the actions of that barbarian."

"No," Bless that wonderfuly foolish girl! Gods, had he realized at the time that an attempted violation would endear himself to the Captain in this way, Sørian would have allowed the officer to continue. Saving her from true violation might have gotten him a new title! "She doesn't deserve any of that."

"As grateful as I am for your intervention however, I found your motivations to be most interesting of all," he said, pressing a button on his throne which prompted a servitor to float over to Sørian in a frenzied circle. Thin tendrils of superconductive ribbon trailed behind it, projecting a holographic projection in the center of its hurried path. A vision of Sørian hugging Ami to his breast towered above him, a handsome man clutching his rescued maiden in picturesque glory. And then the vision of Sørian opened his lips, speaking words Sørian only vaguely remembered, "...Why, I would have thought that were obvious. We're hunting Amon Sui saboteurs."

"Hunting Amon Sui saboteurs," Sáclair chortled, "It seemed absurd to me, but I couldn't well leave the matter without investigation. And would you believe it, a bit of rooting in the ship's systems revealed an interesting pattern."

"Did it?" Sørian relied in coy indifference.

"Indeed it did," Sáclair tapped his temple, "At least twice a month, though often more, a servant by the name of Fen Nur not entered into the ship's census data leaves your domicile. This servant is scrupulous in his anonymity, avoiding all cameras and recording devices. And humble, too, since his clothing would easily pass for the penurious of men."

"Does he now," Sørian coughed, "I have many men in your employ..."

"Do not insult me, Sørian. He is you. You are the one taking late night strolls into the dark places on the ship. You are the one who's been making discrete inquiries into our network to discover any unusual traffic, using what the Tech-priests assure me is a wholly illegal logic cipher. You were not as careful in covering your tracks as you believe," Sáclair laughed, "You've got a set of big brass ones to try and keep this up in the face of all else! Your last attempt to give information to me on the Amon Sui was from a public terminal ten feet from your residence."

"What would you have me say, Captain," Sørian sighed, "Am I to convict myself?"

"Convict? My boy," Sáclair laughed, "You misunderstand this entirely. I want to use you."

"Use me..." Sørian repeated the words incredulously, and realized that the Lord Sáclair did not even have the remotest suspicion of his involvement with the Amon Sui or the dark gods. Fen Nur was a rather hastily created Alias he'd generated after erasing any trace of his previous pseudonym from station records. He could have kissed the heretic enginseer who sold him his logic engine.

"Indeed my boy. I have few enough people looking to fight the Amon Sui who aren't wholly in the Inquisitor's pocket. The Amon need to be stopped, but not at the cost of this ship's soul, what makes her who she is," Sáclair sipped his drink sadly, "The Inquisitor has taken prisoners. New prisoners, nobles. He's going to question them. Torture them, most likely."

Sørian faked disgust at the concept of torture, curling his lip into a disgusted sneer, "How dare he?"

"They are suspects, he is an Inquisitor," Sáclair shrugged. "But he is an outsider. He speaks the words of our language but misses its nuances, the culture behind it. I need someone I can trust in the interrogation room with him. Someone who can help avoid torture, someone who can report his unfiltered findings back to me. Can you be that man?"

"Not the Lionhearts?" Sørian raised his brow in confusion, "Can you not trust them? Or perhaps Mr. Enzo or another officer?"

"Trust is not the issue," Sáclair sighed, "Knowledge is. They're soldiers and commoners, they miss things we would not. And frankly Mr. Sørian, you are unimportant enough that the Inquisitor will dismiss you out of hand."

Sørian took umbrage with the suggestion, in spite of its veracity. A soldier or commanding officer would take the Inquisitor's attention. A minor noble serving as a translator would not. "I... yes, my Lord Captain. I am your man."

"Very well Sørian," Sáclair bowed in slight deference, "The Inquisitor will be waiting for you. Good luck. The soul of the Endless Bounty is in your capable hands."

Dark Gods' blessings upon that insufferable tart of a daughter! He would pray for her good fortune with his next sacrifice. No harm in well wishing those who've helped you greatly.

* * *

Hope. Donat could not remember the last time he'd felt it. Clutching his wife Tessa to his side, he sat on the uncomfortable hospital folding chairs basking in the glory of his newfound hope. Bonafila's eyes had only been open for a matter of minutes, but Medicus Nor assured him that it was a sign of good things. Miraculously, unexplainably, Bonafila's body was healing itself.

Nor was running tests to see what combination of medication had given her such a positive result, but at the moment Donat didn't much care why his daughter wasn't dying. Let better men than he debate the effects of providence on the lives of good men. "Blessed be the Emperor."

"Blessed be," his wife nuzzled up against him, smiling contentedly. Tessa's eyes were puffy and red from crying in relief, but Donat couldn't think of a moment she'd been more beautiful to him. Tessa had been greatly understanding of the needs of his office, spending time with their daughter on his behalf. Every morning Tessa came and washed her face, and every night she combed their daughter's hair and read her a story.

Donat suspected that Nor had circumvented his wishes and allowed David to see his daughter unchaperoned. Too many food wrappers were in the waste paper bin and he doubted the copy of "The Triumph of the Sanguinary" on the end table belonged to the Medicus. Tessa too grew suspiciously mum on the subject of David Sáclair.

There were some days where he wondered if she didn't even know he was a bastard. Women have some of the strangest ideas. Just as well that the Emperor was a man, or the whole universe might implode out of sheer sophistry.

"Shouldn't you be at your post, husband mine?" Tessa teased him jovially, "Or have they figured out how to run the ship without you?"

"Sácomer has taken some additional shifts. The poor man's been feeling guilty since the last battle," Donat ground the words "poor man" in disgust. Sácomer's sheer incompetence and unprofessional behavior was entirely unacceptable. Did he not think that Sáclair hurt as well? Duty was duty, even if it endangered one's cousin.

"You stop that," Tessa pinched his cheek and shook it. He couldn't feel it through his petrified face, but he appreciated the gesture no less as she teased him, "That poor man has a kind soul. We don't have enough kind souls left in the universe."

"I suspect it's well insulated from the rest of the universe. One would have to fight their way through so much blubber that it would hardly be worth the effort," Donat jibed in reply, squeezing his wife's ribs and earning an amused squeak for his efforts.

"You behave," Tessa chided, "We're in front of your daughter. We don't want to embarrass her when she wakes up."

"Throne above, why not?" Donat grinned as wide as his face would allow, "I'd be a terrible parent if I couldn't soundly embarrass my child."

"Oh," Tessa giggled, "How silly of me. Shall I get the vid stills of her birth and first steps to show to everyone in the medical wing?"

"I can't imagine a better way of motivating her to stand up and walk," Donat snorted, "I suspect we might want to start smaller or she'll pull a muscle sprinting across the room to stop you."

"True, she does have those long legs. I'd have a heck of a time outrunning her," The both laughed till they couldn't laugh any more, then went back to staring at her. Tessa sighed sadly, "When she wakes up."

"Of course," Donat hugged his beloved to him, "When she wakes up. Blessings of the Emperor be upon her when she wakes up."

There were few things as glorious as hope.

A/N: As always reviews are welcome.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Changing roles.

Garibaldi floated across the surface of Mars, hovering above the rocky cliffs that surrounded the southern basin of the Psi-corps base. He hopped from stony outcrop to stony outcrop, taking care not to leave behind any footprints that might give a clue as to how he got in. Michael loved the sensation of floating across the low gravity landscape. Having spent the past two years on a space station with slightly below earth gravity he couldn't help but feel a bit like a superhero.

There were faster routes to the facility, but none that he dared risk. Both the sewers and the atmospherically controlled walkways between the Psi-Corps outpost and the nearest habitat dome were patrolled by forces loyal to the Psi-corps. They were all telepaths over the P-3 level, some of them perhaps were even as strong as a P-7. He could not hope to avoid them in such tight quarters.

The Martian surface was doubtlessly patrolled as well, but the harsh conditions and confusing landscape of the red planet made maintaining a secure perimeter impossible – at least not without revealing the facility to be a military installation. And if Garibaldi knew anything, it was that the last thing the Psi-corps wanted was to publicize this place.

So they relied upon motion sensors and stationary turrets to protect themselves from intrusion. Fortunately for Michael, plans of that nature had to be filed with the Mars central planning commission.

It was, of course, entirely illegal for him to obtain them in order to plan his break in. Then again so was kidnapping and he was reasonably sure he'd find a way to live with that too. Well, he would presuming that he eventually felt any.

There was a narrow path of stony outcropping that avoided both the sensors and the turrets, too high and narrow for any sane person to try and walk it. In a word, it was perfect. Nobody would ever see it coming. Still Garibaldi couldn't help but feel his heart catch in his throat as he floated over each crevasse and gully, knowing that falling would mean death by plasma turret.

He ended each jump on the small ledges and loose rocky ground, struggling to balance himself in the unfamiliar gravity. And each jump he'd somehow manage to catch himself on the side of the cliff just in time. He wouldn't fall. He couldn't fall. They had Susan; the Psi-corps had her.

And they were worse than he'd ever imagined them to be. Torture, eugenics, rape, murder, the list of crimes alleged by the psychics who'd hidden in Babylon 5 were enough to curdle blood. What evidence Dr. Franklin had given him was purely anecdotal, but the doctor had never given him reason to doubt his credibility. And a large group of wildly different people choosing to defect from the Earth Alliance went a long way to enforcing that credibility.

And they had her. Ok, it was a _terrible _plan; get in, get Susan, and shoot his way out. But it had the benefit of simplicity and necessity.

Micheal wasn't about to leave his friend to be tortured by some self important slimy weasel of a man as retribution for an embarrassing defeat. The security chief clenched his teeth and sped up the pace as he imagined that smarmy little rat-faced jerk smiling at Susan from behind the narrow bars of her cell, whispering false promises of reprieve and safety in exchange for information. Michael snorted as he imagined her response: Susan would probably tell him exactly where he could shove his honeyed words. The Russian had never been at a loss for stubbornness.

"Damn," Michael hissed as he rounded the bend, flattening himself to the cliff face and trying to blend in with the rocks. A silver flash of light swooped round past him, the round orb of a motion sensor drone. It would seem that the plans hadn't included _every_ defense.

They were common enough in the Earth Alliance, a simple robot equipped with an anti-gravity generator and a rudimentary VI. They were cheap and tended to last even in high danger environments for months or even years without requiring anything other than the most basic of repairs. And, unless Michael missed his guess about the pulsing blue light from beneath its steel skin, with a little bit of ingenuity one could install a plasma mine inside the machine without significantly affecting it's mobility.

He froze, not even daring to breathe for fear it might agitate the silver sphere. As one second passed, then two, then four, the sphere slowly hovered its way around the rim of the ravine, inching closer and closer. The ghostly memory of skin burned by plasma fire wafted through Michael's nostrils as he looked around looking for something, _anything_, to use in his defense.

His gun? No - it would hit him before he could run. Jumping down? Out of the question, there weren't any safe hand holds low enough that he could avoid the drone without getting shot to pieces. Jumping up? Just as bad, capture by the Psi-corps could well be worse than letting himself get shot.

Closer and closer the drone came, with Michael at a loss for what to do. Perhaps if he tore off his glove and tossed it to the side the drone would follow it rather than him. No that was even less of a solution, in the best case scenario he'd die from suffocation, "Oh boy Michael," He grumbled to himself in fear, "What the hell have you gotten yourself into this time."

Michael repeated the Hail Mary in silent fervor as he watched the golden surface of his mirrored glass visor shimmering in the silver pool of the drone's front. It hovered, immobile, inches from his face. Perhaps if he... no, there was no point -it was over for him.

And then, wondrously, it wasn't. The drone, driven by whatever simplistic mind it held, hovered back along the path in the opposite direction. Inch by inch, second by second, till it was gone from sight. It took Michael another minute to realize that he was, in fact, alive.

"You lucky son of a gun," Michael whistled by way of punctuation, breathing heavily in fear as he grabbed loose stones from the cliff face, "That was way too close for comfort."

Michael pitched a golf-ball sized stone across the gorge. With a smile of great satisfaction he watched the drone dive after it, headless of its own safety, as it rocketed into the firing arc of three concealed turrets. It burst into a searing cloud of plasma and glassed martian dust.

Praying that there wouldn't be any more drones Michael hopped the last three miles of gorge, gliding with terrified purpose. The weapons discharge wouldn't go unnoticed. Even now the patrol vehicle was doubtlessly altering course to investigate what had happened. If he was lucky they'd blame it on a malfunctioning drone and go on with their day but he couldn't rely on their incompetence. It was Garibaldi's rule number six; the bad guy is always just as smart as you are, plan accordingly.

So it was that when the boots of his suit clicked loudly, the magnetic undersides clamping down on the ferrous outside of an airlock, Garibaldi took care to activate a signal scrambler in case there were any security cameras in the area before approaching the key pad. Michael couldn't help but chuckle in incredulity when he recognized the Marscorp series g-11 security system.

The Psi-corps were a highly funded and greatly esteemed government organization, but they were still victims of bureaucratic resistance. Government contractors were wont to install the best systems they offered for the initial facility. As time progressed however, disused ingress and egress took years or even decades before Earth would consent to funding an upgrade. This meant that outdated or inefficient systems continued years after their obvious obsolescence.

An amateur hacker could bust a g-11 in about an hour. Michael took two minutes.

Grinning roguishly in the face of a gust of pressurized gases trapped inside the airlock, Michael briefly admired his handiwork. Sometimes it was just great to be Garibaldi. He entered the small UV light sterilization cubicle and pushed the activator. A thin blue line of bacterial slaying light swept over him twice before the door to the main facility opened, the iris of metal wedges spinning inward to the circular walls.

The inner room was covered in a thin layer of red dust from disuse, the cleaning robot apparently never having been plugged into the wall. Michael swore, if anyone investigated his entry there wouldn't be any way to conceal it. Plugging in the robot would be even more obvious than just leaving footprints behind. Then again his plan never had been to leave the way he came.

He chuckled wearily as he stripped off the pressure suit, shoving it into an empty cupboard, "Nothing's ever easy."

Now divested of his pressure suit Michael had no choice but to acknowledge the black fabric previously hidden beneath it. The pressed black uniform was still crisp, if a bit gamey, from his trek across Mars. Black gloves and black boots stood in contrast to a silver pin and buttons, all too menacing in their simplicity, "Jack boots, why does anyone ever trust a group that wears jack-boots. It's like a giant warning sign saying _'Warning! Evil Organization ahead.'_"

It was sized perfectly for his body, but it could never fit him properly. Luckily PPG and flash-bang grenades concealed beneath his jacket snuggled familiarly against his chest as he snuck out of the room, walking with deliberate disinterest in the direction he suspected that prisoners might be kept. It only took a minute before he turned right and wandered into a more populated part of the facility.

Men and women in black suits and white lab coats wandered the halls, exchanging clipboards and animatedly discussing nothing over coffee. He cleared his mind, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other for fear that an errant thought might alert them to his purpose. He weaved his way through the crowd, taking care not to touch anyone.

The lightest touch of skin on skin could transmit his mind and purpose, dooming him entirely. Luckily telepaths were in the habit of avoiding contact. His bobbing and weaving avoidance of everyone in the hallway was interpreted as exaggerated politeness rather than mischief. It even earned him an approving nod from a bearded telepath pushing a mop across the hallway he'd been forced to skip away from, "Mighty decent of you officer."

When the effort of pushing through the human masses without making physical contact got to be too much for him Garibaldi walked into a small break room. He entered the kitchen alcove with cautious haste, pouring coffee into a paper cup and examining the map of the facility to get his bearing straight. Just wandering till he found Susan was a recipe for failure.

For a moment he feared that he'd been noticed but none of the telepaths seemed particularly interested in him. The continued their animated conversations as though he weren't there. A rotund man with mustard stains on his shirt waved his hands wildly as he spoke, "No I have no problem with them doing it. God knows I was getting stonewalled on funding for years; I just don't understand _how_ they do it. I was operating on the assumption that psychic communication could be boosted as far as Earth. But across _galaxies_? I haven't the foggiest notion."

"And Earthdome expects you to replicate it within the year," replied an exasperated woman with a slight slur in her voice of what might have been Chinese. She massaged her narrow eyes, "They never have any respect for our procedures. They want me to figure out how to toss fireballs from my hands. I haven't even been able to move a penny with any consistency."

"They're asking me to step up human trials," said a sad sounding man, African in his complexion and deep in his booming baritone, "They want me to start injecting my compound into a test subject this week. I wanted to tell them to go away, _Nenda kajitombe_, but you know I cannot tell them _no_. None of us can. So to trial we will go, because the _basha_ wants me to."

"Saying the words in Swahili doesn't mean they haven't been said," the Asian woman hissed under her breath. Garibaldi could feel her eyes on the back of his neck as she whispered, "And people who bad-mouth the director have a nasty habit of being found dead by the Psi-cops."

"_Kuma Mamako!_" Michael watched as the man reflected in the coffee pot flipped him off , "My research is too important for him to make me disappear. These psi-cops are all the same, a uniform and no brain. It is the mind that matters most."

"Nobody is irreplaceable," replied the rotund man, "Not here. We saw who they're keeping prisoner in the interrogation center. Don't pretend you didn't. He doesn't care how high up you are in the Earth Alliance or how important you think you are. If you're not helping the psi-corps you're garbage."

"Shut up, both of you, before we all find ourselves in D-block," hissed the woman, apparently realizing that Garibaldi was listening. Not eager for a confrontation, Michael put down his unfinished cup, turning into the hallway and heading for D-block. He hissed in audible relief as he walked out the door and nearly jumped out of his skin when a muscular dark skinned man with a shaved head started speaking to him.

"Don't take it personally," The psi cop smiled, "They're just stressed. The boss doesn't actually have the lab-rats killed if their experiments go south, they're just reassigned and not allowed to have contact with the base."

Garibaldi's mouth opened and closed, unsure how to react to the sudden appearance of a tall black man, "How... who... what?"

The man snorted, "Good grief, I haven't shaken up a rookie this bad in ages. You're one of Curtis's boy's right? The ones who're here to babysit the base in case the Imperials get frisky right? Look I know you're used to having a better relationship with civvies but research bases sometimes do things that other parts of the Corps couldn't handle. The squints like to vent. Sometimes they vent on us. It's part of the job. Don't take it too hard."

He slapped Garibaldi on the shoulder, and shook his hand firmly. A resounding thought pierced his mind as an ID chip was forced into his palm, "_If you're going to try and break into the cell block you'll need this. Good luck, we'll cover you._"

Michael's eyes bulged in shock and the man rolled his eyes incredulously. The chiding voice whispered in his mind, "Oh, c_ome on. This is a highly advanced facility full of psychics. You were noticed. Luckily you were noticed by us first. Normally such an intrusion is unacceptable, but your timing is fortunate and I am in need of a trustworthy agent."_

Garibaldi though _"What do you want?"_ forcing the idea to the front of his mind. The other man shook his head a fraction of an inch, "_Don't project. You don't want the wrong thought to come up with it and be overheard by prying ears. You want to free the woman. That's fine, you can have her. Take her with my blessing. But I want to free her cell mate. Take him with you and I will shield your mind as far as the cells."_

It wasn't as though Michael had a choice was it? The security chief of Babylon Five nodded in affirmation. The man shot the three scientists a cheery smile that seemed to terrify rather than comfort them before winking in Michael's direction, continuing their previous conversation as though the psychic exchange had never happened, "After all the Corps is family, and when has family ever done anything but drive you up the wall? After you mister Smith."

Garibaldi walked along side the black man in silence as they headed deeper into the Psi-corps base. The dome was an old prefabricated facility, predictable in it's layout. D-block was two levels down and a half-mile south in a less populated but better maintained section of the dome. Advanced security countermeasures and sophisticated door locks stood in stark contrast to the thick windowless iron-slab doors they controlled.

The previously constant flow of people trickled down to only a handful of men in black Psi-cop uniforms. A few bored looking officers patrolled the wide hallway, stopping to chat with equally disinterested men sitting at security desks. As Michael just walked past the fourth of these check points with little more effort than tapping on the glass it struck him that none of them were actually looking for intruders. One group of officers huddled around the security desk watching Baseball, not even bothering to look up before buzzing them through.

"_No, they just know my rank well enough not to question me,_" the black man whispered into Michael's mind. Suppressing a snarl of annoyance Garibaldi massaged his twitching eye. He loathed having someone speaking inside of his mind who wasn't invited. Heck, he hated having someone in there who _was_ invited.

"And who are you?" Garibaldi whispered.

The man smiled in altogether too much satisfaction and replied in a near inaudible chuckling basso, "I fix things that are broken. Find things that aren't easy to find. Remove people who aren't productive to our overall goals."

An assassin. He was an assassin, possibly even one of the ones who'd engineered the death of President Santiago. At Garibaldi's disgusted look he jibed telepathically, "_Oh calm yourself Officer. Had I intended to remove you I would have just told my agents to capture you before you got past the mine field._" The man nodded approvingly, "_Impressive work by the way. I'll have to develop a way of counter acting it in the future."_

Michael bit back a venomous reply, though the look on the other man's face suggested that his anatomically improbable suggestion had been received loud and clear. They were passing through the final security check point when the screaming started, a horrible series of sobs and howls that struggled to escape the thick transparent aluminum of the check point's door. Garibaldi gritted his teeth and walked into bedlam.

This was hell. Men and women screamed within their cells begging for freedom as they clawed at the glass, glassy eyed and sobbing. Bodies shivering with the effects of prolonged exposure to psychic suppressant chemicals others sat on narrow cots and steel chairs, huddling for warmth in the cool space of the jail, "What is this place?"

"A solution to avoid embarrassment," the black man sighed as a clearly insane man smeared his excrement across the walls of his cell, "Until other more profitable solutions can be found or we find a more profitable enterprise for them to aid in. Willing participants are unnecessary for progress' sake."

'Human trials' was the word used by the scientists wasn't it? They were using prisoners for guinea pigs. Jesus Christ, they were using _Susan_ as a guinea pig, "Who are they?"

"The worst of the worst I assure you," The black man approached a key pad on the wall and entered his ID chip, "Murderers, rapists and scum of every order. Suffice it to say - parole was never an option for any of them. "

The door opened and Garibaldi followed the black man into a hexagonal room with six transparent cells. Inside the second cell to the left huddled a distinctly feminine form in the clear outline of a tasseled military uniform, a uniform Garibaldi recognized immediately.

Dilgar. He rounded on the black man, "What in the hell are you trying to pull?"

The black man shook his head in confusion, "You're here for the woman aren't you? There she is."

"I'm here for _Susan Ivanova, _the woman you kidnapped from Babylon 5. Where is _Susan Ivanova_?" Garibaldi grabbed the man by his shirt and shoved him against the glass of the first cell on the right, startling it's occupant so much that the tiny man fell out of bed, "**Where is she?**"

"I have no idea," The startled man's eyes were wide with confusion as Garibaldi shoved a gun into the nape of his neck. His mask of perpetual calm broke into a look of horror, "We don't have her! Why would we have her? What would we need her for? It's not like she has any sort of useful intel we couldn't get otherwise?"

"Susan Ivanova didn't die on Babylon 5. I know that for a fact," Garibaldi snarled, "I know you brought back Bester and a woman. Where is Susan?"

"Yes! We brought back _two prisoners. Bester and her," _The man swallowed in fear, "Just these two!"

"Mr. Smith I think you'll find that the obstreperous Mr. Garibaldi is unaccustomed to being wrong," wheezed the sarcastic voice of the man within the cell. Bester, wrapped in thick bandages from head to toe, hobbled over to the glass. He hobbled carefully forward on a leg encased in thick plaster, balancing his weight on a single metal crutch, "Perhaps he will be inclined to believe you if you explain _why_ you believed that he was here to find the Dilgar?"

"Look, I don't give a damn who she is." Michael shoved his gun into Mr. Smith's throat. The whistling sound of plasma charge twittering as he primed the trigger. The threat froze the black man's hand, stilling it's subtle movement towards the butt of a side arm, "Don't even think about it."

"Mr. Garibaldi I respect your tenacity but you've come to the incorrect conclusion. I do not have the lovely Miss Ivanova. I do not have _anyone_. They have _me," _Bester pulled down the bandages at his shoulder to expose exposing recent burns and abrasion, unmistakable marks of recent torture, "And if it means getting me out of this cell, then I am _more_ than amenable to assisting in your crusade. Your fervor is admirable, but belief alone will not make the lovely Miss Ivanova appear in this cell."

Mr. Smith nodded emphatically, "We were under the distinct impression she'd died."

Michael swore and let go of the Psi-cop, "You mean to tell me that I broke into a P_si-corps_ base for **_no reason at all?_**"

"Incorrect," purred a feline voice to Garibaldi's right. The Dilgar officer, a mature lynx of a woman whose greying whiskers drooped with age, chuckled in amusement, "You broke into this base to liberate the two of us and bring us back to Babylon 5."

"And why would I do that?" Michael swore as warning klaxons rang in the prison warning of an unauthorized intrusion. Whatever Smith had done to conceal his entrance had only slowed rather than entirely stopped discovery.

"Because _I_ know of a secret exit to this facility that is vastly preferable to your plan to shoot your way out. Because _I _have knowledge about the plot against Santiago and a pressing need for revenge that will comfortably fit into your obsession with justice," Bester laughed delightedly as Mr. Smith opened the cells with his identity chips, "And because you don't yet know why she was captured by our agents."

"Then impress me already," Michael rejoined in irritation, "What does the last member of a dead race of madmen have to give me other than a massive pain in the butt."

"All in good time Mr. Garibaldi," Bester accepted the two phased-plasma pistols from Mr. Smith, handing one to the grinning Dilgar, "Might I suggest we see to our own liberty before bargaining for that little nugget of information. Mr. Smith, I presume we are continuing with the initial plan?"

"Yes sir," The black man nodded and closed his eyes, biting his lip in anticipation. The diminutive telepath aimed the PPG and fired, two blasts of superheated air colliding with Mr. Smith's shoulder. The psycop fell to the floor howling in pain.

"Christ!" Michael swore in astonishment, "What was that for?"

"Deniability of course. My faction cannot afford for Mr. Smith's position in the Psi-corps to be lost." Bester shrugged as he ripped open the cast over his leg along a hidden seam, revealing an apparently healed leg, "He should keep use of the arm as long as security reaches here in under ten minutes to administer first aid. I would prefer to be gone before then."

The Psi-cop wedged Mr. Smith's identity chip into a small indent in the floor, opening a concealed staircase that wound it's way down into unidentifiable depths. Not exactly overburdened with choices, Michael followed the devil and his house-cat down to God alone knew what. Garibaldi knew he should have been worried about the implications of helping two deeply untrustworthy people escape from a secret black ops base of telepaths.

But for the life of him there was only one question running through his the _hell_ was Susan Ivanova?

* * *

Sir Robart Malcom hadn't been hard to find. He hadn't even put up a fight when Osma's team arrived on the So'go'ol pitch before practice and declared him under arrest. Malcom's team had angrily waved about their shock pistols and shouted rude epithets. Their complaints turned to grumbling silence as Officer Osma fingered the straps of his shotgun.

Lord Fineus Gerard had been a bit more frustrating. Upon Daul's declaration of authority the Lord had ordered his servants into the cellar and barricaded himself in his study. If Daul ever found out the name of whichever Enginseer had been responsible for installing the blast doors in a private residence, they would get a proper punch in the throat. Two melta-bombs and a canister of tear gas later, he'd pulled out his second prize.

They now sat in solitary oubliettes, chained to chairs and kept in constant blinding light to prevent them from sleep. Inspection of the two men's private quarters had revealed an interesting supply of art and So'go'ol equipment but little to suggest they were guilty of any crimes. However Daul was certain that he could get a confession out of them.

It was odd really. Guilty men did not fret or fuss or worry in their cells. They did not beg for mercy or demand council. They relaxed. For them the fear and terror of being captured was now over. Capture was an opportunity to rest and plan. The two men sat in silence, alone and clearly afraid but neither man seemed _surprised_ at their predicament.

"It doesn't sit right with me Inquisitor," Osma said, pulling at his braided beard in annoyance. "Malcom at least is an athlete. So'go'ol players have no issue getting women. He could have had any lady he wanted. So why kill _these _women? Why wait for the Belzafesters?"

"I don't even begin to guess what is inside the mind of a madman." Daul leaned back in his chair and stared at the monitor. It wasn't the athlete that interested him, Sir Malcom didn't strike him as the type to plan ahead; it was Lord Gerard that troubled him. With the man's long standing connections and high born family, a connection to the Amon Sui wasn't implausible. "When does this Throne cursed observer arrive? I've delayed this enough."

"I mean no offense but why are you waiting for him at all?" Chief Osma sipped recaf from a misshapen blue mug bearing the misspelled symbol for his name in a child's hasty scribble. Tariq's work, no doubt. "The quicker this is finished the quicker the Belzafesters will stop climbing down my throat for every minor annoyance."

"Because Sáclair asked me to," Daul sighed in exasperation, "and because he's right_._ Some new perspective on the nobility of the _Endless Bounty_ is not uncalled for. I do not think the way your nobles think. He will be better suited to that than I."

Osma put the mug onto a shelf with deliberate care not to leave it where it might be bumped or broken and replied in disgust, "Sørian's perspectives will certainly be different. I don't know if I'd use the word _better_ in relation to him."

"You know the man?" Daul looked away from the video feed in interest. "What can you tell me about him?"

"Off the record? Other than being an arrogant bastard there isn't much to say. He's the noble son of a noble. Like his father and so on, dating back to the founding of the ship," Osma growled, "I'm just lucky the lazy sod doesn't ever leave his apartment for anything other than boozing and carousing in dens of inequity. If the stupid sod ever realized how much influence his family has..." He stopped. "But I speak out of turn. He is an annoyance but a reliable one."

"Small mercies, officer. Be glad for them. A man who counts the small blessings will never be short of them." Inquisitor Gaal had been fond of that saying. Every time he found his egg to be a double yolk or an extra sweet on his pillow he'd point to it and thank his good fortune. He'd once written Daul a letter to tell him that the flowers on his estate were in bloom earlier than expected. The man never lost track of what was important in life.

A clean shaven man in the uniform of ship security tapped the door frame twice, interrupting them with a slight gulping noise as he cleared his throat. Having captured their attention he spoke, "Sir, Inquisitor, may I present the Lord Sørian."

A handsome man coiffed in egregious decadence veritably flounced through the door past the officer, dropping into a comically exaggerated bow that was too sincere for it to be anything but natural incompetence. He smiled vapidly and giggled slightly before offering his hand in greeting. Daul disgustedly shook the floppily relaxed hand in his own augmentic one and stared at the man in astonishment as the security officer all but fled Sørian.

How had a man this obviously pathetic not been devoured alive by his rivals? It wouldn't take more than two minutes with this hilarious buffoon for another noble house to smell blood in the water. Throne willing it had to be an act. The Amon Sui devoured fools alive, literally so on at least one of the holdings he'd purged.

Daul rolled his eyes and squeezed hard with his augmentic hand, "Sørian, do not insult my intelligence. If Sáclair had intended to toss some useless blubbering noble at me he would have sent Sácomer."

Sørian's eye's popped and he fell to his knees in pain. "Inquisitor! I don't know," Daul squeezed hard enough to fracture bone, "Ok! Ok! I admit it! It was an act. I'm supposed to spy on you."

Daul let go, "I know that. I knew that from the second Sáclair requested your presence. I allowed it."

Sørian massaged his hand and stood up, the vague expression of incompetence leaving his face. Standing straight backed, he no longer looked comical in his clothes. Straitening his elegant ruff he sighed, "So what do we do now?"

"Much the same as we planned to do before, I suspect." Daul shook his head at Sørian's baffled expression and said, "What? If I shot every nobleman I who spied on me we'd soon be devoid of nobles. Just don't lie to me about it."

"Can we please get to questioning the two suspects?" Osma grunted in annoyance. His distaste for the noble's subterfuge was etched in every line of his face, "I want to get this mess over with."

Sørian looked up at the monitors and blinked in shock, "Why on earth have you arrested Lord Gerard?"

"On suspicion of murder," Osma grunted, "The Belzafest Butcher."

"You think that _Gerard_ killed someone? Gerard?" Sørian snorted in incredulity, "Gerard can't even eat undercooked meat. He's a severe Heamiophobe." Sørian tapped on the glass and pointed to the lacerations on Lord Gerard's wrists where the rope burns had started to cut the Lord's skin, "See? He can't even look at his own wrists. It's why he had to quit the So'go'ol league. The second anyone got a cut or a nose bleed he just turns to jelly."

"He could be faking it." Daul chewed his lip pensively. "It would make a good cover story."

"Not unless he's been planning these murders since he was twelve." Sørian shook his head. "I can't see that happening."

"I've seen stranger." Daul replied, "But I see your point."

"Still doesn't explain what the two of them were doing in the crypts with knives and chains," Osma grunted in response, "I still say they did it. Malcom could have done the deed and Gerard the planning."

"Perhaps," The Inquisitor mused, zooming in on the faces of the two men.

"Heh," Osama grunted in amusement, "They know we've got them dead to rights."

"I don't know Osma," Daul tapped the monitor, "There is something off about the whole situation. They seem worried but get the sense that it's more of a general fear than the cold panic of the heretic. They seemed more resigned to capture than anything else."

"Oh for Throne's sake," Sørian sighed, cupping his face in his hands and chuckling, "Save me from the sexually repressed."

"You have something to add to this discussion Sørian?" Daul raised an eyebrow in curiosity, "Something we don't know?"

"Volumes Inquisitor. Volumes upon volumes," Sørian jibed, "But for the moment I'm going to settle for a basic explanation of misbehaving. We need them both in the same room. And make sure they can see each other."

"Why would seeing each other matter?" Daul asked, though he began to suspect the answer. Two men with no wives or girlfriends who met each other in secret were not always plotting a coup of government.

"Like I said," Sørian sighed, "you're over thinking this. What _else_ could two men meeting in secret dark rooms carrying _chains be planning._"

"You cannot mean to imply that they are in sin," Osam looked distinctly green at the prospect, "By the Throne, perhaps they are the Butchers. If they can live with... _that... abomination_ about them, who is to say they can't do another vile sin? It is as unnatural as murder I tell you."

"So is marrying your mother or breeding with your sister, and our Captain comes from generations from that," Sørian shrugged impassively, "You'll find most things the clergy puts extra effort into telling the masses not to do tend to be actions they find undesirable. If it weren't fun it wouldn't be necessary to make it against the rules."

"Is there a law against it on the Endless Bounty?" Daul sighed. If all these men did was sleep with each other then an Inquisitorial pardon in exchange for co-operation would go a long way towards getting them to talk. An inquisitorial writ of permission would allow them to continue their minor heresy in secret in exchange for their loyalty. Loyalty that would be his and his alone.

"Custom mostly. " Osma's lip curled in transparent displeasure, "The nobility greatly discourages it as a sin. They'd disinherit both of these men for this. As well they should! Malcom is a role model for children. C_hildren!_" He shuddered, "I'll have the posters of him removed from my son's room at once. There is no place for that on this ship. By the _Throne_ I'll have to tell the ships school masters as well."

"Officer Osma," Daul's voice ground in dangerous baritone, "You will do no such thing."

"Sir?" Osma repeated in confusion, "They're perverts. I cannot trust them to be allowed back into places of respect... Malcom runs a So'go'ol league for _children_. He's _alone_ with them for hours!"

"Osma, we are going to go into that room. We are going to interrogate those two men like any other two men we have in custody. And then we will leave the room, revealing nothing of their personal lives to the rest of the ship," Daul pointed at the two men, "What they are doing is legal, private, and no business of mine provided that it is not directly related to treason or sedition. What you do in my service is classified. That will not change on a whim."

Osma was having none of it. "Sir, at least let me enter these men into treatment. Bishop Leogere claims to have made great strides behavior modification. Perhaps he could cure them."

"This is the same Leogere who claims to have one of Sanginius' bones?" Sørian snorted in amusement, "The same Leogere who charges some fifty thousand thrones a week for his treatment?"

It was to be expected, Osma's views on the written scripts was a literal one. It offered little room for interpretation or disagreement. Daul greatly respected the man but in this case his views could greatly impede the investigation, "Osma I need these men to answer my questions willingly. They need to feel like they can get out of this room alive. Part of that is going to be you staying silent on this will reveal none of what you learn in my investigations or I will have you arrested on charges of treason."

Osma scowled in fury and tugged at his thick beard but growled a frustrated assent, "Yes sir."

"Sørian, you will come with us. Do not speak unless spoke to directly," Daul glared at the man, "Am I understood?"

"Crystal clear Inquisitor," Sørian nodded sincerely, "Lead the way."

"Open the wall between them Osma," Daul commanded, motioning in the direction of a raised stone platform in the center of the room large enough for five men to stand abreast, "It's time we had a little chat."

The three men stood on top of the slab and Osma manipulated device on his wrist, activating the platform and lowering the trio into the oubliette. Daul squinted at the blinding brightness and throbbing music of the prison, massaging the ringing out of his ears. Osma flipped a switch to dim the light and silence the music.

No longer trapped in blinding cacophony the two noblemen blinked the stars out of their eyes, only grudgingly aware of their surroundings. Before they could speak, Daul pulled two syringes of sedatives from his pocket and jabbed them into the bound men. It wouldn't be strong enough to damage their lucidity but it would go a long way towards loosening their tongues.

It was Lord Gerard who spoke first. His eyes were puffy and red from crying, "Just kill us. We know it's what you're planning to do eventually and all things considered I'd prefer to die prior to torture."

"Am I?" Daul pulled a long silver knife from his belt. Imbued with a small measure of psychic energy, the hexegrammic runes on the blade hummed with purple light as Daul probed the two men's surface thoughts. The light did not actually do anything, but it looked frightening. Fear and faith were an Inquisitor's greatest weapons.

And he most definitely had them scared, petrified even. But not scared of Daul specifically, for them being discovered was a culmination of years of fear. Lord Gerard's spiteful words were general, directed at Daul for lack of a better target, "I think you misunderstand my purpose."

"He damn well doesn't," Sir Malcom spat on Daul's sleeve in defiance, "I know why you dun' brought me and Gerard to this room an' I don't take kindly to it."

"Ah, so Sørian was correct. The two of you are lovers," Daul sighed.

"That prissy little lickspittle can kiss the broad side of my arse," Sir Malcom twisted his fingers into a rude gesture, "I know who I am, and loving Gerard don't make me less of a man than that mewling nancy."

Osma snorted in amusement. His disgust for the man's lifestyle was apparently less than his dislike of Sørian. The nobleman's face curved in abject hatred for a moment before smoothing out in apparent acceptance. Daul suspected that the boy was inexperienced with criticism, which could be dangerous in its own right.

"Sørian is the only reason I'm coming down here to talk instead of just ripping the truth from your mind," Daul cut the rope binding the man's arms to his chair, leaving the leg bindings in place, "Apologize."

The astonished So'go'ol player massaged his wrists as Daul cut the bindings on the Lord Gerard. He sighed and muttered an insincere, "Sorry," under his breath in the direction of Sørian.

"Sorry?" repeated Lord Gerard in astonishment, "He's going to filet us with that knife and you're apologizing?"

"Nobody is fileting anyone," Daul spun the knife in his fingers, "Not yet. You are going to explain to me what you were doing in the crypts. You were seen entering there multiple times. Our witness identified you as bringing knives, whips, and chains. Why?"

Sir Malcom blushed beet red and muttered under his breath.

Daul cupped his ear, "I didn't catch that. Why?"

"Privacy! We went there because there was privacy," Sir Malcom yelled in frustration, "It was the only place that our families and my team mates were guaranteed not to walk in on us."

"You... defiled each other," Osma growled, clutching his shock maul to center himself, "You defiled each other in a _church crypt?_"

"It was my family's crypt, the place where the urns of my ancestors are stored. Rather, it's where they _would_ have been stored if we hadn't been hit by decompression a year ago. Now it's just an empty room," Lord Gerard shrugged, "I didn't think the dead would mind me using the space for something other than sadness and death. An affirmation of life in a place of death; it was due."

Osma turned his back on the prisoners, resisting the urge to cave their heads in with his weapon. Daul patted his shoulder comfortingly, reaffirming his presence before turning back to the two men and asking, "Why the whips, chains, and knives?"

Sørian actually giggled, "Inquisitor Hilder, does he have to spell it out for you? There are recreational uses for all of those items. I can suggest some hololith stills if you need to further explore the matter."

The feelings of bemused embarrassment mingled with sexual arousal from the two men was affirmation enough for Daul's taste. He had no urge to delve deeper into their minds for those particular memories. He holstered his knife angrily, his ire at losing his only lead dripping from his voice as he said, " Keep these two under house arrest for the moment, but move them into better conditions. Osma, we're going to have to go back and question Rik."

"What happens to us afterwards?" Lord Gerard probed. A small measure of hope entered his eyes as he realized that they would not die.

"Lord Gerard, whatever you may believe is your business but I have absolutely no intention of airing your dirty laundry out to the world. What you do in the privacy of your bedroom is your business," Daul sighed, "But please try and keep it out of the church. One of the priests believed you were doing something unholy in there. The poor lad was too simple to make the connection."

"Oh!" Lord Gerard blinked in surprise, "Rik remembered that far back? He really is improving."

"You mean I spent the past day in a hole because that retarded pervert was listening to the door," Sir Malcom shouted while punching his fist into his palm, "I'll kick that simpleton from here to sunday, that'll teach him."

"Robart! Be nice, the poor man doesn't mean to be off balance. It isn't his fault he took a shot to the head," Lord Gerard crossed his arms and puffed up like a jaybird. Now that he no longer feared for his life a generous portion of the swagger of nobility was back in his mannerisms, "He can't help getting a bullet wound to the head. He fought for the bounty the same as any other soldier"

Osma blinked in surprise, "He was a Lionheart? The Bishop said he'd never left the chapel."

"The church took him in after a gunshot to the head left him simple. The little bastard has been living with Brother Willan for decades," Sir Malcom said with great invective, "Sodding little twit can't remember a time before then so I suppose it is as close to his whole life as the little bugger can manage."

Lord Gerard smiled, "Brother Willan was a good man. He turned a blind eye on me and Robart in exchange for some series 3 Gennak anti-agapics."

"Wouldn't a priest have access to those already?" Osma asked, perplexedly twirling his thick beard.

"They aren't as good as ours. Only series 1 Joxxor," Lord Gerard ran his fingers over the stubble on his chin in annoyance, he clearly hated being poorly groomed, "And he was trying to heal Rik, he treated that boy like a son. It was terrible on the boy when he died. We found Willan dead in the crypt. We actually paid for his his cremation service. It was actually quite moving. Al'Ashir read the man's favorite passage of the Holy Word. Guilliman 3:234:M39."

"Guilliman," Osma tapped his chin in thought before repeating the passage from memory with encyclopedic accuracy, "Love heals all wounds, there is no wound in this or any other life that cannot be healed by the balm of an woman's heart. For in her innocent care all pain disappears."

Sir Malcom smiled, "The man truly believed in love. Preached it every day of his life till the day he died. We need more like him."

"The heart of a woman heals all wounds... Blood of the Emperor! We need to get back to the Cathedral _now_. I've left Susan to care for the Butcher of Belzafast," Daul swore, leading the trio back to the hovering platform, "He's going to kill my apprentice. The Throne cursed buggering son of a dog is the Butcher!"

Osma flipped the switch on his wrist and swore furiously as the device overloaded, coughing sparks as the machine spirit died. He ripped the device from himself and tossed it to the floor, "Throne!"

Sørian looked altogether too pleased at Osma's discomfort as he drawled, "Having trouble Officer?"

"Where are the manual controls?" Daul proactively searched the edge of the platform for any levers or buttons, "We need to get this moving."

"There are no manual controls, it's a maximum security cell," Osma growled in frustration, "Thats' the entire reason for the wrist controls, to stop prisoners from being able to just flip a switch and escape."

"We're stuck here?" Sørian bemoaned, "For how long?"

"Normally there should be someone to check on prisoners every twenty minutes, but my men aren't going to be in any hurry to get closer to the Inquisitorial interrogation. If they check every hour it will be a miracle," Osma growled in frustration, "He always kills at the same time of day. We're not going to be able to reach the Cathedral in time."

* * *

Built with the most sophisticated of Minbari weapons and armor, the Grey Council mothership _Valen'Tha_ vastly outclassed every other warship of the younger races. It hadn't been the intended flagship of the fleet, the Drala Fi held that honor till Captain Sheridan destroyed it in the Earth-Minbari War.

The Council ship was more than just a weapon, as much a cathedral as it was a warship. As the mobile base of the Grey Council it was intended to be the mobile military bastion of Minbari art, culture, and learning in the face of what might come in the next great war. To that end great works of the Minbari had been packed within the confines of the _Valen'Tha._ It was a collection to rival the museums and libraries of a dozen worlds.

Delenn smiled at Lenneir's barely contained glee at being allowed into so auspicious a place. He worried for her greatly, but in the face of so many great and wondrous things he could not seem to stop smiling. There was a wonderful innocence about him, a purity of spirit few men had. He would make a great member of the Grey Council some day, though it would be inappropriate for her to ever say so.

His exuberance reminded her of her own apprenticeship to Dukat. She had loved her younger days as Dukhat's protege. Delenn spent weeks, if not months, of her life going through the old texts of Minbari scholars, devouring the words of Valen, Meklen, and Durval. It was not a life she'd surrendered easily when she'd left for Babylon 5 but, she'd been bound by obligation, guilt and destiny to leave. Only a fool tried to deny destiny.

Delenn wandered through bone-white crystalline corridors, bathed in the pale blue light shimmering through silver-mesh fixtures on the wall; followed closely by Lenneir. The flickering purple light shimmered and shone through crystalline sculptures on the walls and doors. They painted intricate meditative patterns of refracted light and color, the introspective work of ages.

Delenn approached the stony faced outer guards without fear. The council guards came from all castes and belonged to none, choosing loyalty to the grey council above all else. They would allow her to pass. The same courtesy would not pass on to her apprentice, "You will have to wait out here until I'm finished inside. Only members of the Council and a few acolytes are allowed beyond this point."

"I understand. I will wait, and I will pray for you if you would not consider it presumptuous," Lenneir smiled brightly, a deep twinge of worry written on his every feature.

Delenn smiled, "No, not at all."

"Until later Satai Delenn." Lenneir bowed and sat down on a bench, watching the light's flicker and softly praying in the language of his priesthood. He pointedly ignored the guards in doing so, a small measure of polite deference on her behalf.

Delenn passed into the inner sanctum of the Grey Council, walking down the corridor of the religious caste to her modest room. She'd cleared out the majority of her personal effects when she'd moved into the Babylon station but a few odds and ends had been either too large or too ceremonially important to leave the ship. It was her room, but it no longer felt like home to her. There was too much of Dukhat in the room: video stills of the two of them together, a couple of books given by him.

She hadn't wanted them on Babylon Five. Thinking about Dukat too much wasn't healthy. She'd loved him dearly, he'd been like a father to her and she would have let him be more if they'd had more time together. When he died she cried out for blood in sorrow and rage, and the Minbari were less for her choice to do so. And it had been her who had cried for the bloodshed to stop when she realized the gravity of her error.

She reached out her hand to the video still and pulled it away as a twinge of hatred played at her heartstrings for the humans. That was a part of her life she'd left behind her, the guilt, the rage, and the sadness. The humans were not to blame for misinterpreting the Minbari custom of open gun-ports.

She sighed and stripped naked, removing the rich clothing of a diplomat for the simple grey robes of the council. The council were to wear no symbols of status or wealth, carrying only the simplest of woolen robes and a single quarterstaff. It was a tradition that harkened back to the early days of the Minbari, when Valen united the warring clans under a single banner of truce.

The fabric chafed against the softer meat of her human flesh and a slight chill seeped in through the fabric. Minbari fashion was ill suited for human physiology. The proportions were wrong tight where it should be loose and rubbing uncomfortably on the tufts of hair growing from her arms and pelvis. Precisely why evolution had chosen to keep the four most inconvenient places for hair was a mystery to her.

She winced as a hair yanked off of her head when she pulled it over her robes, a subtle reminder of how out of place she really was. Saying a soft prayer to Valen Delenn grabbed her staff and strode out the door at the back of her quarters, heading down into the chamber of the nine.

Light of any kind was forbidden on the path but years of stumbling through the darkness had cured her of needing any illumination. She swam through the pitch black darkness, finding the familiar stairs with her memory rather than her sight. Moments later, she left the cloying darkness for a room illuminated by a single crystal chandelier which cast nine pools of light that stood in a circle at the room's center. Each of the circles was conspicuously devoid of the other eight council members, though she could hear the sounds of breathing in the darkness.

Delenn walked to her place among the nine and pulled her hood back, speaking the words that were her's alone to speak,"Summoned, I take the place that has been prepared for me. I am grey, I stand between the candle and the star. We are grey, we stand between the darkness and the light."

Silence was her reply. A pregnant moment passed before the dull baritone of Coplann echoed through the blackness. He was a meager man, tall and slight of build but burdened with the harsh bone crest of the warrior caste. Delenn had always considered him a friend but his face held no friendship in it as he strode forward into the light, "They will not come Delenn."

"But I was summoned." Delenn protested.

Coplann shook his head in regret or sadness, Delenn was not sure which. "To receive judgement, yes. Not to appear as one of the nine."

"I'm entitled to a hearing," The unfairness of it was unbearable, "I'm allowed to defend myself."

"That was before you disobeyed us. You were told to wait before taking this action." Coplann paused, looking her up and down, "Before becoming alien to us. You've been away from us for too long Delenn. Your contact with the humans has changed more than your appearance. If you are no longer one of us, how can you be one of the nine?"

"My heart has not changed." Delenn clutched her left breast, balling the fabric in frustration. They could not do this to her, they were her people. She did this for them as much as she did it for the humans.

"We no longer know your heart. Delenn," Coplann deliberately omitted even the meanest of titles to re-enforce her dismissal, "The council has voted to remove you from our presence. From this day forth you are no longer a member of the grey council, no longer Satai. I'm sorry Delenn."

Delenn's vision swam before her. Her life's work, her purpose and her density, they were all gone in an instant. No, not all gone, "Wait. What about my appointment to Babylon 5. My position as Ambassador is separate from my role as Satai."

"We are still debating this. It is your right to make a statement before the nine if that is your wish." Coplann bowed slightly. As a member of the Warrior caste this was as close to sympathy as she could expect from him.

"It is." Delenn whispered in breathless exhilaration, "Thank you."

A fit of boldness overtook her and Delenn spoke, "May I ask, who was chosen to replace me?"

Coplann turned back to the shadows, walking out of sight. "I will convene the nine, when we are ready you will be summoned."

Delenn's fingers balled the fabric of her robes in frustration as she walked back in the direction of her room, knowing full well it would be the last time she could call those quarters hers. It would be the last time she stripped off her robes of state. The last time she would be Satai Delenn.

No, she would not let melancholy overtake her. Delenn had purpose in destiny. She marched forward, wincing from small hairs pulling from her body yanked by the shifting of the rough fabric. At least she would be more comfortable in her ambassadorial ensemble.

* * *

Susan kicked her feet back and forth, shuffling them across the floor in front of her chair. Babysitting the witness was an astonishingly boring job. Rik's daily duties of cleaning, praying, and muttering to himself in something vaguely resembling hymnals weren't exactly the sort of thing one wrote home about. It was as Rik busied himself with preparing a meal for the two of them that she'd taken to flipping though the illustrated children's copy of the _Heilig Credo Imperialis_.

Much to her astonishment, Susan found herself greatly liking it. Every page was filled with tales of mysterious heroes and dark gods trapped in eternal battle for the souls of billions in a galactic and eternal war between good and evil, all painted with loving detail. The childhood dreams of a boy wanting to join the space marines hummed gleefully in her mind as she went over the parables of Guilliman, accenting her own fascination. If it ever got back to the Earth Alliance it would be a best seller.

"Guilliman my favorite," Rik smiled toothily as he peeked at the book, tapping the page with a flour covered hand and a leaving a white print on the blue armor of the smiling hero before going back to rolling meat into dumplings, "Best of the Primarchs."

"The credo seems to be calling Sanginius the best, certainly the most beautiful," The winged Adonis was always depicted in a position second only to the Emperor himself, with the notable exception of Horus who was shown on an equal level but steeped in shadows and intrigue, "He was always my -er- the Inquisitor's favored Primarch. Something about his incorruptible purity appealed to him. Even I admit that beauty without vanity is something to be admired. "

Rik's face scrunched up in pain as though he were having difficultly articulating himself, "No, no- not best, never best. Not as good. Ugh. Too girly. Not as good. Not pure."

Susan frowned in sadness and cooed soothingly, rubbing the disabled man's back, "It's ok Rik. It's ok, I'm still learning about Guilliman. How about we talk about it over dinner? That should be ok right? Eat a nice meal in us and then we can talk."

"Yes," Rik nodded emphatically. He tossed the dumplings into the simmering oil, pausing briefly to lift the lid on a pot of rice and give it an approving nod. "Yes, food is good. Food is good."

A small black box on his waist whistled twice and he looked at in irritation before rooting around in his pockets. He pulled a phial of blue liquid out of his pocket and stared at it in disgust before drinking the bottle, coughing from it's acrid flavor. At Susan's confused look he held up the empty phial, "Medicine. Gotta' take it when it beeps. Need my medicine."

"Oh," Susan looked at the browning pasty of the dumplings and felt her mouth start to water, "Rik if those taste half as good as they smell I may be in love."

Rik smiled an uncharacteristically wolfish smile as he poured out a generous measure of water into a cup and added herbs to make tea. He offered her the cup with a slightly steadier hand than he'd had even moments before, "It's a special brew. Willan used to give it to the sick so they'd heal better. Sleep better."

Susan accepted the cup and drank deeply, savoring the flavor of it's earthy sweetness. It left a slight numbness on her tongue as it went down but it's overall refreshing presence left her content, if a bit light headed. Normally she was a coffee drinker but for Imperial Tea she could make an exception. In her surprise she briefy reverted to her native tongue, "Bolʹšóje spasíbo, vot éto da. That packs a heck of a punch."

She relaxed into the tall stool and leaned her elbows into the countertop, listening to Rik talk as he cooked. He was positively cherubic in his pleasant disposition and care, she wasn't entirely sure if she was guarding him or if she was his eagerly anticipated guest.

"Wilan always cooked with me. Others didn't want me to cook. They were worried I'd hurt myself, but he let me cook. Taught me," He smiled as he started dicing onions and tossing them into the pot of boiled rice, "Said 'Boy needs a skill, not a bunch of whining nursemaids.' He always taught me."

Susan idly noticed that Rik's posture had improved over what it had been only moments ago, his fingers were shaking less. It seemed that just thinking about his former care taker gave him strenght. Even his slurred speech seemed less pronounced, "He seems like a nice man."

"He was a great man," Rik said in a voice curiously devoid of slurs or stuttering as he reached in with a long set of chopsticks to pull the dumplings out of the oil and place them onto a while ceramic plate, "The best. And he was taken from me. And now you are going to help me get him back!"

He grinned maliciously at Susan, catching her entirely off guard as her brain registered the abnormality of how relaxed she was. Susan's mind waded through cotton as she stood to her feet and stumbled backwards. Her hands found the handle of her pistol and she unbuttoned the holster, not drawing it but holding the butt of it for reassurance, "What was in that tea?"

"A sleeping aid. The medicine gives me brief periods of lucidity, but it goes away. It always goes away. Wilan was working on it, he was getting close to making me whole enough to function." Rik clutched the sides of his head and scratched his fingers over his face as though insects were crawling on it, "I'm slipping, even now but I must finish my task. He was the best! And then he was taken away. But he'll be back. I'll bring him back."

"He's dead," Susan steadied herself on the countertop, "You showed me his -" a shudder ran through her as her fingers slipped on the flat surface, unwilling to hold, "-his grave."

"No!" Rik bashed his fists on the table in fury, mashing the cooked pastries in anger, "He made me better. I _have_ to fix him. I can fix him. He _deserves_ to be fixed. It's why I need them."

"Them," Susan growled in sudden recognition, a sudden burst of rage and adrenaline stalling the haze at the edge of her vision, "The girls -son of a- _you_ killed them!"

"I needed them. I needed what they had," Rik ran a finger over his breast, caressing his own heart, "I needed their power. It's how I'll fix him."

"What did you do with their hearts? Why did you take their hearts?" Susan recalled the thick red strips of meat that Rick had minced into pieces before wrapping them into the dumplings, brushing mashed bits of pastry from her overcoat in horror.

Rik grabbed a handful of the smashed pastries and shoved it into his mouth, chewing twice before swallowing throatily. He laughed as he followed Susan's mortified stare, "Not these, just grox-flesh. The heart must be fresh. It must be still warm with its love. It must be raw."

Susan yanked her pistol out of its holster and fired at Rik's head, missing him but forcing him to seek cover. Breathless with fear Susan hobbled out of the kitchen and towards the prayer room she knew to be full of people. She needed to be around people, Rik wouldn't kill her with an audience.

Would he? Well, she hoped he wouldn't. The man was clearly not firing on all cylinders. As Susan looked over her shoulder she saw the blurry outline of a man hobbling after her on a lame leg with just the merest hint of silver to show the knife in his hand. One Susan knew was bound for her heart.

Susan fired twice over her shoulder and yelped in furious protest as a chubby servitor-cherub flew down from the ceiling to wrestle the pistol from her fingers, doubtless responding automatically to the weapons fire. Susan punched the airborne ball of flab between the eyes as it sang an apology in High Gothic warning her that "violence in a house of the Emperor would only lead one to hell."

Susan shot the second one between the eyes as it swung low grunting, "Not now," as her left knee went numb, entirely refusing to move. A third cherub butted her in the chest, knocking her to the ground as the first came back and bit her hand, disarming her and flying away with the weapon as two more came to hold her down. She struggled against the howling infants, punching them in their malformed faces till her knuckles bled but the tiny cyborgs held on.

"Enough," Rik snarled. A firm hand reached out from the blurry blackness of the corridor and clamped down on Susan's thoat like a vice, squeezing tighter and tighter as she felt the point of a knife digging into the flak armor of her jacket. The blade, sharp enough to skin a full sized bull grox, struggled to slice the thick layered fabric of her shirt. Rik swore as he hacked at the layered wool and ceramics.

God bless than insufferable bastard Hilder, he'd just saved her life. Susan kicked hard, catching Rick's knee with the jutting spiked teeth of a decorative skull on her boot and twisting hard for good measure. Rik let go of her with a howl of pain, unintentionally swatting one of the cherubs pinning her arm in the process. Susan wriggled free and crawled in the direction of sound and light, muttering to herself, "Come on Susan, _come on"_

Her shoulder burst into pain as a lance of light tore a hunk the size of a golf ball out of her padded armor and scalded her arm, spinning Susan into a dimension of anger she'd never felt in her life. He'd _shot her. _He'd shot her in the back. He'd shot her with in the back with _her weapon. _Glancing shot or no, that would Not Do.

Susan screamed in rage and pain, tapping into her borrowed memories as she splayed her fingers and tossed a gout of psychic fire at the man with all the psychic might she could muster. A sphere the size of a basketball careened down the corridor, exploding into a multicolored blast of shimmering light and sound, "Frag off!"

Addled by drugs, she'd missed her mark by a half-meter, tossing Rik into an alcove ass-over-elbows. It wouldn't kill him but it had the benefit of outright slaughtering the cherubs in a nightmarish burst of burnt cybernetics and roasted chubby bellies. The charred and broken cherubs mewled lamely on the ground where they flapped with their roasted wing nubs.

"Defiler!" Rik howled, "Heretic witch! I will have your heart!"

Rik pulled a pill from the black box at his waist and chewed it as he shoved broken bones back beneath the skin and twisted his dislocated hip back into place. His eyes bulged from a delirious mix of insanity and chemically induced bliss as Susan shouted, "Ohcome on, that's just _cheating_."

Rik erected himself, the unknown science of his pills causing him to groan in ecstasy as each twist and rub of his fingers over his every injury healed them.. He cracked his neck twice to shift his vertebrae back into place and ripped a decorative power-halberd from the decorative statue above a nobleman's tomb, thumbing the activator switch and bringing the ancient weapon to life. It sputtered and spat with orange light, criss-crossing lifelines of power twinkling with mordant menace.

Susan held up her hands to let loose another burst of fire, hoping to at least kill her murderer, when a warbling mass of billowing red robes and mechanical tendrils bounded over her and pounced upon her assailant. The astonished Rik swung the halberd but to little effect; the pole-axe was ill suited to defend from a close ranged attack. Agumentic talon and barbed mechandrite met bare flesh, slicking and tearing with a mechanical precision in contrast to the howling specter of death commanding them.

Rik's arms were torn from his sockets with malicious nonchalance, his legs following them soon after. The priest's torso fell the floor, writhing in agony but unable to die, his body still enchanted by the miraculous chemicals. Blood streamed across the floor as Rik sobbed in fear and confusion, crying out to a bust of the double-headed Eagle for salvation, "No, not yet. Not yet! I'm not finished. I can still save him! I can still save him."

The uncaring red robed phantasm towered over the pitiful figure, pulling a pistol from his robes. The hall echoed with the harsh bark of gunfire as a fist sized projectile collided with the man's head, bursting into a corona of white hot flames as it bust on impact. The priest was immolated in a cloud of white-hot flame.

The specter turned from the immolating body, giving Susan a gristly view of the new and upgraded Cairn Thross. He'd always been intimidating and unearthly, his misshapen augmentics and massive bearing had been intimidating in their own right but the menacing nature had always been an implied rather than overt display. Carin's new upgrades lacked even the meagerest pretense of civility.

Swallowing nervously as Cairn lifted Susan to her feet, she could not help but notice the feel of razor sharp talons on the thick leather of her overcoat. Nor could she help noticing a couple of barbed scythes waggling on the tips of augmentic cables, twitching like a scorpion's tail. Even the decorative thurible hung from a barbed length of chain that winked ominously past the thin tendrils of incense as it swayed from his belt.

"Thanks," Susan winced as she moved her scalded shoulder the wrong way, "But don't think this makes us friends."

The Skitarii stared back at her, his glowing green optics swiveling in the shadowed interior of his cowl in a way that gave Susan the distinct impression that he was rolling his eyes at her. He holstered his bolt-pistol with a mechandrite, examining her wound. Drugged, tired, and confused, Susan consented to Cairn's amused mothering as he half-carried her into the light and activity of the high-ceilinged cathedral antechamber.

She'd let her guard down around the Imperials, allowed herself to be lulled into complacency by Rik's apparently pleasant nature. It was not a mistake she would allow herself to repeat.

* * *

General William Hague watched the blinking light of the _Agamemnon_ winking into hyperspace on his view screen with great apprehension. The Sheridan's former command would be a friendly environment for John to prepare his defense but it would only provide a brief respite before his hearing. William couldn't afford to aid his long time friend and ally, not when doing so could endanger the secrecy of his investigations into Santiago's early demise.

No, John's fate was in his own hands now. God help him, he was on his own.

Hague would have to figure out a suitable replacement for John in the event things went sideways. Sandra Hiroshi? Perhaps. It would be a hard sell though, as few candidates that he would trust could pass Clark's Earth First vetting process. It had been pure luck that Clark valued Sheridan's war record enough not to interview the man. But there was no other _Star Killer_ to be had.

Doctor Franklin had been kind enough to inform him which of the surviving senior staff was informed of their suspicions about Clark. It was a short list consisting of himself and the now absent Chief Garibaldi. Meaning that there were far too few men he could trust in his staff.

Babylon Five was the lynchpin of his plans. In the event that evidence could be discovered, it would need to be distributed to the known worlds as well as to the Senate in order to insure that Clark didn't manage to sweep it under the rug. Internal pressure alone wouldn't be enough to oust Clark short of civil war. Nobody wanted that.

William leaned back in his borrowed chair, looking up at the clock and considering the possibility of dinner. One's problems often looked less onerous on a full stomach and the hydroponics gardens on station were the envy of the rest of the fleet. After several months of rations, anything else started to look gourmet . He looked at his watch and remarked, "Why not? It's time for dinner somewhere in the universe."

William strode over to the office door, opened it, and yelped in surprise. A mutilated woman's head covered in mechanical devices and tubes of unrecognizable fluids glared back at him. The visage poked out from crimson robes that shifted and rippled as curious mechanical devices fluttered about beneath them. She regarded his rank pins and the empty room behind him before croaking in a girlish mechanical hiccup from the thick face mask covering her lips, "Where is Captain Sheridan?"

"Captain Sheridan has been called back to Earth," William placed a name to the horrifying face as Zack Allan rounded the bend, puffing with exertion and clutching his side. He had to have been chasing her for half the ship to get that winded. A flock of floating skull servitors zipped past him, hovering macabre creatures weighed down an odd array of miniature arms carrying ink, parchment, quills and incense.

"Unacceptable," Magos Frist growled, "I require his immediate presence."

"I am the interim commander of this station," He offered his hand to her, pointedly ignoring the skull transcribing their conversation with agitated movements of a long feather quill, "General William Hague."

"General," The Magos' eyebrows raised slightly and she took his outstretched hand, shaking it in her own bone crushing cybernetics after shifting the heavy cloth bundle over her shoulder, "Then it is you with whom I wish to speak."

Officer Allan, still massaging the stitch in his side, interjected, "Ma'am, I told you that you have to call ahead. You can't just barge into the Cap...er, the General's office. Geez louise, Magos I need to take you down to the precinct and question you! You just _killed a man_."

"What?" William blinked in shock, pulling his hand away from hers. An all too familiar hot, sticky redness coated his fingers and he realized that the cloth bundle the woman carried with her was dripping onto the floor. "Jesus!"

"It was a cyborg and it was in self defense," The Imperial walked past William into the Captain's office, completely ignoring Officer Allan's admonitions. She bent down on the floor and started placing a circle small metal spheres on the ground, pausing only briefly to look up approvingly at the skull painted on the ceiling.

"Well done boy, well done." She commented to nobody in particular, "A sign, a good one at that."

"Magos, I _have_ to interview you," Officer Allan's voice held more exasperation than worry, "It was self defense. I know it. I was _there_ but I still need to ask you some questions."

"Sheridan extended me diplomatic immunity did he not," The Magos touched her finger to one of the metal globes and then the next. She continued to touch each of the globes, connecting them with a thin beam of light. "That allows me to ignore your regular legal processes."

"It does but," Officer Allan looked at the General apologetically and said, "I'm sorry but there isn't actually much I can do to stop her short of shooting her."

"Is every day like this on the station?" William rubbed his forehead with the palm of his left hand.

"No, sometimes it gets confusing," Officer Allan sighed.

"Captain Sheridan was apparently a saint," William growled, "Magos Frist. What in the hell are you doing?"

The globes hovered into the air, spinning around in random directions to form a sphere of light, within which a small model of the station appeared. The Magos stood up and spoke in a her chipper repose, "Mapping out a blueprint of the station."

"And why, pray tell are you doing that?" Imperials, the whole lot of them were insane near as he could tell.

"To decide where to install the shield generator and upgraded sensors," The Magos shook her head in disgust, "I've had my fill of danger. I won't be installing military grade emitters but I have no intention of fist-fighting another cyborg that slips through your net. I won't risk the lives of those of us trapped on this station because of your technological backwardness."

"A fist-fighting cyborg assassin?" The general looked at Allan incredulously, "Seriously?"

"Indeed," The Magos flung her parcel onto the ground, unwrapping the disemboweled carcass of a man in his forties. She reached into the man's chest and ripped a hunk off the man's sternum. It snapped off with a puff of blue static discharge, "It was a slapdash job of it too. No skill to it at all, just brute force construction."

William did not take the microchip from her hand when she offered it to him. The blithe treatment of the dead by the Imperials was as unnerving as indicated in Sheridan's notes, "Magos? Are you admitting to murdering a man on my station?"

"Not murder,"The magos crushed the chip with her fist, "Justice, this thing was on it's way to murder your pet psychic."

"Pet?" William sighed, "Are you referring to Miss Winters?"

"Yes sir," Officer Allan interjected, "The cyborg was trying to waste Miss Winter's client, Taro Isogi."

William bit down a curse, he'd received no less than twelve calls ordering him to spy on the head of Futurecorp. If the man had actually been assassinated it would have been a political cluster bomb. Christ, this was all he needed, "Is Isogi alive? Miss Winters?"

"Your psychic and her companion are well, better than well. Miss Winters is a dangerously capable psychic. I've never seen energy shunted quite that way," She absentmindedly started manipulating the holographic image of the station with her tentacles, never breaking eye contact with William, "But it should never have reached the point where her competence was necessary. It is far too easy to sneak weapons onto this station."

"I'll admit there have been some things we've missed," William admitted, "But our procedures for finding weapons are stringent."

"In the past two months you've missed a war servitor, several plasma rifles, a coven of weapons grade telepaths, and a demon that ate a decent portion of your crew. And that is just what I can confirm personally. We are long past the point where you get to claim that your screening processes are anything more than wishful thinking," The Magos pulled a long golden reed from her robes poked at the cyborg's innards, prompting slight motions from the corpse as she manipulated the mechanical devices within, "By the Omnissiah, it is there but for the grace of the Emperor that this thing did not go on a killing frenzy on this station."

Officer Allan grunted in grudging affirmation, "I notice you forgot to mention that a lot of those were brought onto the station by _your people."_

"It only qualifies me as more of an expert on your security flaws," The Magos brushed his concerns aside and pointed to the holographic image of the station. Bright blue sections of the hologram flickered over the static green outline of the station, indicating changes made by the Magos. The tech-priestess examined her work and nodded. "Yes, I can have this station up to a passable standard of military preparedness without overly taxing your systems."

Shields, she was offering them _shields_, "And what do you want in exchange?"

The Magos tilted her head, apparently confused by the question, "What do I want?"

"Yes, what do you want for this technology?" William sighed, batting a floating skull away from his head. He hated haggling, "What do you want me to give you in exchange?"

"I don't want anything from _you_. This is an offer for Captain Sheridan. I will deal with _him_ and him alone," Kerrigan leaned back on her tentacles, spreading them out into a reasonable facsimile of a chair, "I need to reach an understanding with the station's commander."

"Mam I assure you that I am authorized to make any negotiations on his behalf for the period of his absence," William sighed, "And I cannot guarantee that he will still be the commander of this station after his Senate hearing."

"Senate hearing?" The Magos massaged her temples before muttering a few words of Gothic that struck William as being distinctly impolite, "Am I to understand that he is facing formal inquiry from your government for his recent actions?"

"I cannot comment on the matters of internal military politics mam," William shook his head, "But I don't have high hopes."

"Then I suppose you will have to do your best to defend this station without my technologies," The Magos veritably seethed with disgust, "I will deal with Sheridan or there will be no deal."

"I can pass the message along," William did what he could to conceal his excitement. This might very well allow him to save Sheridan's career even if it didn't save his command. Unfortunately reason reared its head and butted into an otherwise wonderful burst of optimism. William sighed and asked the obvious question, "Why?"

"Why Captain Sheridan?" The Magos paused, pondering the question. She sniffed and rubbed some of the gore from her hands with a oily cloth she pulled from her robes. It did little to actually clean them, but at least managed to move the mess around into a different pattern. "There are a quite a few reasons. Politically, it benefits me to have a commander on the station who is indebted to me. Practically, I find the Captain to be highly competent and unlikely to break the terms of my agreement. But if I'm being blunt, I find it to be repugnant that your government could so easily discard him for fulfilling his duties to the best of his capacity."

"You should never just toss someone away for doing the right thing," She paused with a slight hitch of breath that might have been a sob, "I refuse to allow him to be tossed away for having done the right and righteous thing. If your government cannot be trusted to keep Sheridan in charge of this station then it simply cannot be trusted at all."

"I will pass the message along Magos. Now, you will allow Officer Allan to interview you and remove the corpse from my Office," Williams invoked the voice he used on Ensigns and enemies, a quiet growl that demanded obedience, "_Please_."

The Magos shrugged, "Our business is concluded and I'd been hoping to give your men a basic primer on spotting military cybernetic enhancements anyway." She stood and grandiosely waved for officer Allan to follow her, "Come child."

"And I thought Londo was annoying."Allan groaned in frustration, "I've got to go sir. I'll send Dr. Franklin to get the body but someone needs to be on damage control for this one."

"Yes," the General waved at the Mago's retreating back, "You go, I can call the Senate Oversight Committee and inform them of the news."

"Tell them to prepare for tonight's news as well," Officer Allan said over his shoulder as he followed the Magos, "Cynthia Torqueman was a witness to it as well. Torqueman and her entire camera crew."

General Hague used a series of words entirely unbecoming of an officer as he punched his identity code into the long range communications system. Dinner would have to wait. Senator Hidoshi was going to need all the warning he could get.

* * *

Little though he wanted to admit it, Vir found the Imperial nobles to be astonishingly similar to his own people. They stood in stark contrast to the filthy masses of olive skinned docking bay crewmen wearing varying outfits of grease-stained cotton and wool or the merchant men who concealed their low-born upbringing behind silks and furs. The Nobles did not wear their dress uniforms. They were _part_ of their dress uniforms. There was a distinct swagger in each medal, medalist and gaudy ornament that Vir wondered if there were a person beneath them at all.

The noble houses of Centauri would gladly have killed for a chance to be invited to a party in so auspicious a ballroom. The thick marble columns and singed tapestries hinted at it's recent disrepair however the throne room of the Endless Bountywas still as gloriously opulent as any palace Vir ever hoped to be in. After close to a week living in the near constant darkness of the cargo bay, being allowed this audience was like being born a second time.

Gorgeous women wearing sheer garments and thick leather corsets that were somehow more scandalous than outright nudity carried platters of succulent food and flagons of spiced wine, cheering in celebration. It was a feasting day on the Imperial calendar. The celebration of a man who'd chosen to castrate himself rather than falling to the temptations of a demon, which was apparently the reason for the scandalous clothing. Ostensibly one would resist the temptations of the 'demon hostesses' choosing abstinence over temporal joys. Though, near as Vir could tell, the abstinence lasted only so long as the evening prayer bell before the nobles descended upon both food, wine, and hostesses in a frenzy of post-fasting indulgence.

Two Lionhearts, Fadir and Hamman, had been assigned to him to serve both as protectors and captors for this journey. Though it seemed fair to say they'd chosen the former over the latter as their primary duty. They delighted in his cultural faux pas and linguistic hiccups, thrilled at his simple misinterpretations of daily activities they took for granted. His confusion over calls to prayer had been a special joy for them. The two of them laughed uproariously as Vir dropped to the floor when a siren sounded, mistaking the kneeling for prayer for an explosive decompression warning.

"_Imperator_ calls for downfall _xenos_, but he is not so literal I think," chided Fadir with an amused cluck of his tongue on his teeth, passing Vir a sweet roll from an equally amused Hamman.

"He is perhaps greatly excited for praying _Imperator." _Snorted Hamman.

Their pidgeon-english combination of interlac and gothic was near impossible to understand but they simply _refused_ to accept that he could understand their language no matter how many times he spoke to them in it. He was a _xenos, _xenosdid not speak gothic, ergo he must not speak gothic as well as he said he did. Some things never changed really, the Narn did the same thing. Outright refused to speak in their own language with anyone but a Narn.

The Nobles of the bounty, however, had no such foreknowledge and thus simply assumed his accent to be a product of a foreign world rather than a foreign species. A number of curious parties had approached him on their way to the throne, issuing polite greetings before being shooed away by the Lionhearts. Those not brave or foolish enough to walk up to him eyed him surreptitiously over feathered fans and through thick veils of fabric, cordial in their predatory appraisal.

Political intrigue, opulence, and weaponized civility, Great Maker but the nobles of the endless bounty made Vir homesick. Caught up in his comparisons of the two societies he did not notice the porpoise of a man wobbling in front of his path till the man's spidery cybernetic frame lowered the man to his level. His blubberous jowls split in a wide smile as he burst into a bombastic laugh that tossed flecks of spittle stained with wine onto Vir's face, "So you're the little devil that's been causing me a whole mess of ruckus and bother. You've got a set of stones on you xenos I'll give you that. Coming here on _Inquisitorial_ authority so that you cannot be denied."

He slapped Vir's shoulder with a meaty paw, chatting convivially. "I thought that Osma's head might very well explode. The poor man spent hours trapped locked in his own jail cell after the keys broke and then this. I'd shy from ship's security if I were you Ambassador."

Vir might have taken it for a threat if he believed this vacant idiot of a man had two brain cells capable of connecting with each other. Based on the odor of liquor on the man's breath it seemed far more likely he simply lacked any filter between what passed for a mind and his lips. As courtly and polite as he could manage he bowed out of the other man's grip and said, "I will keep that in mind- er- I didn't catch your name?"

"Master of the Watch, Étienne Sácomer," At your service. He hiccuped and kicked his pudgy legs back and forth, making the rolls of fat wobble in gelatinous imitation of jogging, "I am to take you to the Captain."

"Oh," Vir looked to Fadir in surprise, genuinely astonished that the porpoise of a man was a military officer. The Earth Alliance prided itself on the idea of having every officer in it's military at a level of fitness capable of holding their own in a fight. Even Doctor Franklin had been expected to be able to keep up with a grueling level of physical fitness, "Very good then."

He followed Sácomer as the man lifted himself onto a stone platform with his spider legs, moving with surprising dexterity on his prosthetics. With a jolt of purple energy the stone platform rose in unexpected locomotion, carrying the three of them up and into the air. Watching with fascination, Vir observed a number of similar platforms hovering around a conspicuously empty throne.

"I thought I was to meet with the Captain," Vir looked at the Imperials in frustration.

"You will," Replied Sacomér pleasantly. He twisted a purple stone set into a golden ring on his pinky and the stone plinth shot upwards at the sheer ceiling towards a hideously grinning mural of a augmentically altered eagle tearing at a man's face. Vir whimpered in shock at the stone platform hit the mural at break-neck speed, crouching into a ball in an impotent effort to avoid the pain.

After a moment he peeked open a scrunched eye to the sounds of Hamman and Fadir's amused giggles. Fadir reached down and lifted Vir back to his feet, scowling at Sácomer between snorts of laughter as he chided his superior officer in their native Gothic. "Sácomer perhaps we should _warn_ guests that the hololithic images won't kill them next time?"

"Ah," Sácomer blustered in embarrassment, "I just assumed that he would have known."

"Stop bullying him," scolded an annoyed girl's voice, "The poor dear looks scared half to death."

Vir looked over Fadir's shoulder to a stunning young woman wearing a conservative mix of red silks and golden lion emblems. He could just catch the outline of silvery-gold hair and a mischievous smile from beneath a lacy white veil. She stood to the side of the room, holding an infant by the scruff of his neck as the small child leaned forward, eagerly trying to waddle his way over to the platform. Though she would have been of average human height, she towered over Vir in her high-heeled leather boots.

"And where do you think you are going Master Agustus?" Fadir handed his rifle to Hamman and walked over to the infant, picking the boy up and spinning him around. The infant Agustus giggled excitedly in reply, "Fady! Fady! Fady!"

The young girl shook her head in amusement, "When he heard that you were coming he simply refused to stop crying till I agreed to bring him to see you."

"Ami you know as well as I that this little heartbreaker knows a kindred spirit when he sees one," Fadir tickled the boy's tummy and lifted the boy to his shoulders, "He can't be blamed from wanting to be around a master."

"Oh can't he," The girl snorted as she waved a pleasant greeting to Sácomer, "Thank you Sácomer. I can take him from here."

"Are you sure about that?" The portly man asked, "I was supposed to bring him to your mother."

"She gave me the job, seems to be under the impression that I've been spending too much time cooped up alone lately. Insisting that I start taking on some courtly responsibility to keep me in the world." The girl, Ami, pointed at Vir with a gloved hand, "Like escorting an Ambassador to my father's study with the help of armed guards."

"If you insist," Sácomer replied in disappointment, twisting his ring and lowering the platform back through the holographic image. His head disappeared from view below the shimmering image as a snap hiss of ionized air heralded the thin purple barrier of energy that blocked the Captain's residence from the great hall.

"So then" The girl curtsied and held out her hand to Vir, "You would be Ambassador Vir?"

He took it and kissed the back of it as he'd seen the nobles do in the great hall doing, "Yes, Vir Cotto. I'm afraid I don't know your name."

"Ami Sáclair, daughter of Captain Sáclair," The girl smiled, locking elbows with Vir and leading him down a high ceilinged hallway, "The one taking you on a tour of my household while my mother is indisposed for such duties."

"She's sick?" Vir asked in genuine interest.

"Pregnant with my younger brother, but otherwise in great health." The girl's voice hitched with excitement, "She's with the Bishop trying to pick someone to do the baptism ceremony. Al'Ashir was left on the Babylon Station so she's had some trouble finding a priest."

Hamman away looked up from the game of peek-a-boo he was playing with the child on Fadir's shoulders, "I thought she was going to use Rik? The poor man needs something to do now that he's left alone most of the day."

"She didn't say," Ami sighed. "She's been so hormonal lately that it could be anything. Throne only knows which unfortunate soul she's quizzing about baptismal founts."

They walked through a heavy set of oak doors and into a room full of leather furniture and tapestries. A handsome swarthy man was rolling around on the floor as two young boys and a little girl attempted to tackle him. The muscular man feigned near defeat as he flopped around in their play-fight, tickling whoever got too close to his calloused hands, "I'll eat you up you little Lions."

"Having fun Danzig?" Snorted Ami. "Still fighting the good fight?"

The leader of the Lionhearts sat up, grabbing the three children and holding them under his arms in a hight bear hug. He jiggled them back and forth to squeals of amused laughter as he replied to Ami, "I seem to recall a tiny blonde girl giggling as I picked up her and her brothers not ten years ago. She seems to have grown up into a sarcastic young woman. I can still lift you under one arm if I want to."

"Far be it for me to rob Paulo, Vincente and Marian of their well deserved tickles," Ami snorted, "Is my father in the study?"

"Of course, he had me take over the game from him when I arrived. Said, 'I'm not about to leave these little cubs without a proper prey to replace me,' then popped back in the study. Actually he asked that you be there for his meeting with the Ambassador. Apparently he has something for you to do." Danzig plopped the children down on a sofa and continued his play-fighting as he talked, "Oh and Aryana and Vigo wanted to know if you were planning on still going to dinner with them tonight. They're going to roast one of the Ostriches and watch a holo-drama."

"Yes to both," Ami smiled kissing the craggy man's forehead like she might for a favored uncle, "Thank you Danzig."

"Yes mam," He saluted her with one hand as he fended off his three pint-sized attackers with the other, "Of course mam."

"Your brothers and sisters?" Vir queried as they walked past portraits of stern but handsome men and their families. They all had apparently been painted to give the impression of austere authority. Even the children looked distinctly perturbed.

Ami flashed him a dazzling smile from her veil, "Some of them. The youngest of us. Fifteen in all, sixteen if you count my brother to be."

"Sixteen?" Vir squealed in astonishment. The largest human family he'd ever met had given birth to three in all. Centauri families at time got that large but the humans were vastly more conservative as a species.

"The Lady Sáclair is not the only woman who finds her way into the Lord Sáclair's bed, even if she is the only one who finds her way into his heart. But it is not my place to speak of that." Ami's lip curved up behind the fabric of her veil to hold back the tirade she apparently would have very much liked to indulge in. Vir felt a shiver of annoyance run through her arm as she composed herself.

Deciding it was best not to go into the matter Vir changed the subject, "I was one of six, though I was the only one from my mother. She was his second wife, a political marriage to a house that quickly lost favor after the death of the old Emperor. I never really knew my older siblings that well but I had a lot of cousins who I still stay in contact with."

"They're lucky to have you Ambassador." Ami smiled, "The Inquisitor told my father that it was you who dragged him to safety after the Vorlon monster crippled him. It was very brave of you. I do not envy the danger of fighting one of those... things."

"They aren't... I mean...I wasn't really – I mean I was but it just - Too many people were dead. The Inquisitor saved us from that thing, whatever it was," Vir blushed and scratched the back of his head, "It was the right thing to do...stopping it, that is. It was evil. Kosh, by the maker, it made no sense for Kosh to attack Hilder."

They rounded a corner and walked past two Lionhearts standing on either side of a cherry red door, entering into the study beyond. It was a room furnished in the same baroque opulence that he'd come to associate with the empire. What space was not dripping with unnecessarily lavishness was covered in ancient scrolls and tomes bound with hand tooled leather.

"Ah," Captain Sáclair rose from an overstuffed chair, pulling a long pipe from his lips and brushing the crumbs of a recent meal from the front of his robes. Tossing the data-slate in his hands upon the table he pulled his daughter into a hug, kissing the top of her head, "Thank you my darling. It's good to see you."

The tall man scrutinized Vir. The piercing blue corneas gave the distinct impression of dissecting Vir in the process. "So you're the Centauri who Hildy' added to his retinue? The one who is here to represent our _guests _in the cargo bay."

"I am," Vir swallowed hard and tired to keep his knees from shaking. Sáclair's hawkish features lost none of their flinty menace in spite of his apparent cordiality, "Assuming the Centauri and Narn arein fact guests."

"What else would they be?" Sáclair laughed heartily, though without any mirth, "We're all friends here."

"We're beginning to think prisoners would be a more accurate description of being kept in a dark hole for a week surrounded by vent dwelling predators and not allowed to go anywhere on pain of death." Vir almost swallowed his tongue at the unintentional burst of honesty, "We were fighting and dying for you not so long ago and now we don't even have beds. It's not acceptable."

"Osma assured me that the accommodations would be more than sufficient to meet your needs," Sáclair replied in genuine surprise.

"Osma has a great many ideas about the world that are outdated father," Ami interjected, "I would be very much surprised if the bay they're living in is fit for a servitor, let alone a large group of people."

"I thought I ordered the Y-block dormitories be dedicated to the xenos and their immediate needs?" Sáclair grabbed his data-slate in confusion, "How on earth – ah – that would explain it." He peered over his slate sheepishly, "It would seem that the Y-block dormitories decompressed in battle against the Vorlon and haven't been repaired yet. I presume that Osma put you a cargo bay with orders to keep you there till a solution was found."

"And what happened to that solution?" Vir replied in irritation, massaging where his back still smarting from lying on the floor, "And some decent food? Narn and Centauri eat human standard foods."

"Donat is supposed to be in charge of this sort of mundane detail, but he's been given a leave of absence to spend time with his daughter. She woke from her coma today," The Captain looked over to his excitedly squealing daughter's suddenly grinning face, "Yes that was the message I wanted to get to you in person Ami. You can see her later."

He turned back to Vir, "I'm unaccustomed to dealing with both my own duties and his, but Sácomer is ill suited to be trusted with managing what Donat does. You have my sincere apologies about your treatment on my ship but as we will be rendezvousing with your peoples by tomorrow at the latest would you settle for the rations and some additional blankets? Perhaps some good wine?"

"I suppose that would be acceptable." Really walking back with _anything_ more than what they had at the moment would be fantastic, "If you'd send some of the Lionhearts to guard us instead of the regular security forces."

"The _Lionhearts? _And why in the _Eye_ should I do that?" Sáclair walked over to his cabinet and poured two silver goblets of wine, handing the first to Vir in amusement, "My security is more than capable of defending themselves."

"I'm sure they are. But the Lionhearts can play musical instruments and if we're going to be under lock and key I at least want someone there to fill the silence," Vir sipped from the glass conservatively. His tolerance for alcohol wasn't especially strong, "It might keep Narn and Centauri from actually murdering each other out of simple boredom."

Sáclair snorted in amusement mid sip, coughing as the wine went up his nose. He beat his chest twice to clear it and howled with laughter, "You want an _orchestra?"_

"If you're willing to spare that many," Vir nodded and smiled at the giggling Ami, "But a string quartet would go a long way towards smoothing this over."

"Throne above, why the _Eye_ not? Fine Ambassador, you will have your orchestra," He crossed his arms, spinning his goblet amusedly in his hand, "It's the absolute least I could do and I have to confess I find I greatly enjoy the culture of your species. I think that your race would easily find a place within the good graces of our Empire, even possibly the Inquisition."

"I fear the Inquisition's good graces are in short supply today Captain," The furious voice of Inquisitor Daul Hilder preceded the man's entrance as well as the entrance of his shadow, the skitarii Carin. Sounding less like a man's and more like the booming thunder of an oncoming storm it sent shivers up Vir's spine, "We. Need. To. Talk."

Sáclair sipped from his goblet in apparent obliviousness to what would have sent Vir running for the hills, ignoring the green balefire spilling from the man's eyes and mouth, "About what?"

"A number of troubling things." Tendrils of smoke were rising from the table where the Inquisitor's fingers clenched it, digging deep furrows into the wood, "All of which are better discussed away from prying ears."

Sáclair put down his goblet and poked at the still smoking black runnels in his table, "That is a five thousand year old heirloom Inquisitor."

"It is about to be a five thousand year old piece of charcoal," Replied the Inquisitor, blinking in surprise at the Inquisitorial sigil about Vir's neck, "Throne above is there anyone who _hasn't _joined my household in the past month without telling me?"

"I assumed it was you," The captain looked at Vir in astonishment, "The ID codes checked out and it's legitimately his."

"Where in the devil did he... Vira'capac! That meddling lizard," The Inquisitor massaged his forehead in annoyance, "Another detail Jak has apparently decided is low priority at the moment."

The skitarii nodded in approval at Vir, twittering in a pleased fashion. Hilder looked at his body guard in incredulity, "Really? It's the xenos who you give immediate approval to while my apprentice is still on probation in your eyes?"

The skitarii tapped his master's augmentic arm, adamantium clicking on ivory. Hilder sighed, "Of course, I haven't forgotten he put himself in danger on my account. You're right as usual. He is more than sufficiently capable in a tight situation. Worthy."

"Uh," Vir blinked in surprise, "What?"

The Inquisitor patted Vir's shoulder, "Mr. Cotto, you threw yourself in front of a rampaging psychic to pull a complete stranger to safety because you felt it was right. You continued to administer treatment to me and pulled me to safety in spite of the clear and immediate danger to anyone who was around me. You have earned my respect."

Vir didn't know exactly what to do with that knowledge so he settled on, "Thank you."

"Good," Hilder nodded in approval, "Now if the young miss Sáclair will be so kind as to help you find something in the household larder I would be more than glad to talk with you about what I hope to achieve with your help after my meeting with Captain Sáclair."

Vir's growling stomach voiced it's assent and he thanked the Inquisitor again. Ami locked arms with Vir but didn't lead him away quite yet, "Inquisitor, has your apprentice had any luck with... with what I talked to her about fixing?"

The Inquisitor's already stern face hardened, stretching his scars. "The Butcher has been dealt with. More than that I cannot say. Your father and I have business to talk of girl. Don't force yourself to grow up too quickly with knowledge of the world no sane woman wishes to have. There was too much sadness and death for one of your youth to be burdened with."

"And your apprentice? Is she well?" Ami probed nervously.

"Peace child," Inquisitor Hilder said soothingly, "She is well. A bit shaken up but she managed to get the Butcher."

"Good," Ami grinned in satisfaction, marching Vir out the door and in the direction of the larder. The cherry red door slammed shut behind them, echoing with the dull sound of a turning deadbolt. Vir followed her, feeling a bit daft about how painless the process of getting what he wanted from the Imperials had been.

"Let's get you a decent meal. No, not just that; something more! Tell me Vir." Ami giggled in transparent glee as she directed him to the kitchens, "Have you ever watched an Imperial holo-drama?"

* * *

Guinevere Corey was an imposing woman who wore her pant-suit the way a medieval knight would have worn a suit of armor, with only slightly less self important swagger than a 14th century noble. She would have made a terrifying drill sergeant if she'd been willing to submit to anyone's authority but her own. John had to give Hague credit, he'd picked a hell of a woman to represent him. She didn't just walk into the conference room of the _Agamemnon_, she _owned_ it from the second she entered.

Now if she could just let him get in a word edgewise they might get along famously, "Miss Corey, I don't think-"

"No, you don't. Don't think, don't talk, don't act, don't even _breathe_ without running it by me first. You are ten different kinds of screwed on this thing and it's my job to make sure you walk away with this without jail time if this goes to court martial," Miss Corey's thick shoulder-pads loomed imposingly over her shoulders elevating her suit in abrupt angularity, "Good grief, Captain, you don't just walk a legal tightrope, you do cartwheels on it."

"My actions as Captain of Babylon 5 were done for the good of the Earth Alliance," John repeated for the thousandth time, "They were entirely legal."

"Captain Sheridan, I do not get called in to defend someone who did something 'entirely legal.'They pay me is six hundred credits an hour too much to bother with _that_," John's lawyer pulled out a thick stack of folders from her leather briefcase, "Now are you going to argue with me or help me plan your defense?"

"I can't believe this," John groaned in annoyance, "The whole process is absurd."

"Not from where I'm sitting," Guinevere Corey put on a set of reading glasses, intently examining her notes, "Captain I'm staring at a four figure casualty statistic."

"And it could have been a 100% casualty statistic if we hadn't taken action," John barked in irritated reply, "I took every precaution to protect our people."

"No, no," Miss Corey shook her head, speaking in a more soothing tone, "Captain I'm not accusing you of anything. That's not my job. I'm here to prepare you for the questions that you _will_ likely face in an open session of the senate. They are going to poke you and prod you hoping for you to respond. They want you to react. We have less than a week to get you ready."

"It's just infuriating. I'm going to have to sit there and take it as a bunch of armchair quarterbacks poke me with sticks to see if I'll growl. You see this after every battle, every war. People get done with it and what's the first thing the loser says? We could have won. If we'd just had a little more time, more resources, if we'd just done one thing better, we could have won." John sighed, "They come out of the woodwork to talk about something they haven't got the slightest clue about. What's worse; they believe it. It's no different than the Battle of the Line."

"We won the Battle of the Line Captain," the woman looked over her legal brief, "And if you let me help you we'll win this one as well. Now, let's try this again from the beginning. And remember, don't rise to the insult."

A soft knock echoed on the door frame as a rosy-cheeked ensign popped his head in, his clean shaven face blotchy where the stubble was just poking through the skin. Somehow he looked even younger than when John had been commanding the _Agamemnon_. He saluted the Captain and spoke in an official voice, "Sir. Ma'am. There's received a message from General Hague."

Guinevere snagged the crystal and dismissed the ensign with a look before plugging it into the conference table. The table lit up, translucent green words appearing on its surface in a plain missive from the General. His lawyer skimmed it before looking up at John in incredulity, "John, somebody out there must _love_ you."

She swiveled the document around so that he could read it. It contained two columns, one written in English and the other in High Gothic. He couldn't make heads or tails of the legalese but the complexity of the words and logos impressed him of its importance, "I don't know what this is."

"This is the first draft of a treaty to gift the Earth Alliance with the technology to make shields and upgraded laser cannons. Apparently Frist wants to upgrade her new home but only if _you_ are the commanding officer of the station," Miss Corey tapped her nose knowingly, "Let's see if those armchair quarterbacks are willing to turn down _shields_."

"Lets try those questions again Miss Corey," John's mood perked up greatly, "I have the oddest feeling that I'm going to be able to pass them with flying colors this time round."

* * *

Abbas felt his brain turning into mush as he listened to the recording of Magos Dexxira'tel lecturing on the topic of basic data systems. It had all seemed so simple when Magos Frist had sat him down and drawn it on his data slate but now that she was no longer there to guide him through the engineering diagrams, it seemed that all of them had changed into a fascinating mix of gibberish and oblong shapes.

"I need to get memory engrams installed before the Magos realizes I have no idea what on earth she says five minutes after the fact," Abbas sighed, "Orr, have you gotten any farther in this than I have?"

Abbas looked to his left and realized that he Orr had frozen in place, the boy sat stock still with his spoon hanging in front of his mouth. Taking it for a practical joke Abbas swiped at him with his data-slate, "Very funny man, be serious."

Orr burst into a cloud of blue smoke as Abbas fell off his bed and into a So'go'ol pitch he'd been fond of as a child. Standing up with some confusion Abbas looked at the Data-slate in his hand only to find he was holding an oversized piece of uncooked grox steak.

"Oh for Throne's sake," Abbas pinched himself and felt nothing, "I fell asleep. The Magos will have my hide."

A troupe of So'go'ol players ran around him, firing back and forth at each other. He recognized the uniforms of his favorite team. He knew that he was supposed to be doing something to do with studying but for the life of him he couldn't remember how it was relevant to the game.

Abbas ducked down and pulled out his own stun pistol, feeling great pride in the So'go'ol uniform he wore. The Magos wouldn't begrudge him one game and he knew that the flying blue grox circling the pitch wouldn't let him leave anyway, not without a silver whistle.

He leapt over the boxes and tucked into a ball, rolling down the stairs as stun-fire spluttered across the railing. Sparks hissed and spat on the puddles of moisture dripping from the ceiling as he leapt to his feet, soaring above his opponents and landing on the other side of the pitch. Astonished at his own feat of acrobatics he jumped again and found himself soaring more easily.

Again and again he jumped, the game long forgotten as he rose higher and higher till he was eventually flying. He soared around the cargo bay, swooping twice before banking left and soaring out the open window and into the void of space. Inky cloying blackness swirled around him in an ocean of sound and shimmering dust, psychedelic trails of orange fluid moving out of his way with every paddle of his fingers.

The normally empty void of space was teeming with life. Multicolored fish bubbled their way past planets and stars, nestling in reefs of asteroids and planetary debris. Silver sharks ate blue warbling bird-like eels, braying in amusement at Abbas' playful smile.

A golden manta circled Abbas, singing songs of good cheer. He caught the golden manta's tail, sinking his fingers into it's skin like a pilot fish. Laughing like a madman, Abbas whooped with joy as the singing golden fish swam through the stars, joining with a thousand other manta rays. The golden fish swam around huge green flowers, tending to them and singing with them in a glorious chorus cheering for life and wonder.

They bathed in the light of brilliant white stars, feeling the tempo of their constant solar drumming base line. The great stars nurtured their planets, caressing them and filling them with teeming life. The ocean filled with more animals and plants than Abbas could hope to count, each adding to the song with new rhythm and motion. A symphony of harmonious eternity. The golden fish and their plants hovered around ancient men of stone and lithe, transparent men of eternal beauty and serenity. Each had their place, each had their part, and all followed the suns with rapture.

Then from a place of darkness came a mewling discordant cry, abrupt in its severity and envy. A measured staccato of furious hatred. From a dark hollow of shadows came the sorrowful ones. Slight of figure and near translucent in their temporal nature they lashed out at the animals, crushing fish, bird, and beast out of spite. They charged forwards, murdering then disappearing back into the ether.

Incensed by this the largest and strongest of the creatures pounced on the sorrowful ones, fish, flowers, dancing men, huge saurian figures and stone men crushing the murderous aggressors. They battled for an age and a half, pure titanic might versus craft and guile. The minds of the sorrowful ones were great and terrible but the suns heard the terrified cries of their children and came to their aid.

The sorrowful ones were mighty, but no match for the suns. Sorrow was cast back into shadow and night.

The chorus was diminished, but not gone. The dancing men ever vigilant for the sorrowful ones return, the suns turned back to their worlds. They made new fish, beasts, and plants, sowing their garden with more life than ever before, all to the sorrow of the sorrowful men. New creatures came, apes, wolves and vipers, each adding to the tune till it exceeded it's former resplendence.

The sorrowful men turned to their own dying sun, a hateful god who'd long abandoned them, and pulled a poison from it's corpse. They syphoned a hungering hatred from it's marrow, giving form to a thirsting venom from the birth of all. The howling maws of the abominations fed upon the singers, leaving behind silence and sorrow.

No longer discordant, the sorrowful one became the silent ones. Marching across the stars with their hungering abominations they moved ever forward, crushing the star children. Men of stone crumbled, men of steel rusted, and all manner of bird and beast were slain. Abominations swallowed whole worlds. The Suns came to save their children but they too were food for the hungering ones, monsters weaned upon the flesh of stars like a mother's milk. Beasts fled to the silent ones, begging for mercy and pledging service.

Traitorous vermin and mewling vipers ill suited to sing in the first place, they found easy living till the hunger of the Abominations grew too strong to bear and the vermin became food for their new masters.

In their pain and desperation the dancing men forged their terrified chorus into a weapon, bringing forth abominations of their own from the song, bringing alien songs from beyond. All manner of disgusting creatures of melody were forged to silence the hungering ones. Unable to kill the Abominations, the Suns fled to the corners of the universe, creating life with little thought as to how it grew and lived, so long as it survived. The endless field, the hastening blades, denizens of endless dance, and the hidden ones became the new image of how life was to be. They forged their creatures into weapons, turning the men of steel into blades, the men of stone into walls, and the fish and flowers into sharks and thorns to protect the nascent choir. For even the immortal were made moral.

Cautions and nature and nearly old as the stars themselves the arachnids started biting every creature in sight in desperation, poisoning them so that the silence would not reach their hidden webs. Born in a time before the song they hoped to confuse the silence, hiding between worlds. They crushed all who strayed too close to the nest. The fish and flowers rose up to crush the spiders wrapping their vines an webs about each other, attacking in the past and future in eternal looping battles. But with five words the greatest of the Suns brought the spiders into the fold, turning them into a weapon against the silence.

The Arachnids joined the song, howling at the top of their voice and disappearing before coming back and doing it again. No order, no planning, just fear and war and death. The dancing men and the arachnids fought alongside the otherworldly abominations, giving the men of stone time to forge great black gems. Horrible in nature these gems were intended to do that which should not be, to turn the power of the stars upon themselves, harnessing the power of creation to un-make what is. Armed with chaos and horror they struck back, slaughtering the silent ones and their abominations and driving them back to their worlds. The children of the dancing ones, the hastening blades, became the favored weapons of the suns, given power and knowledge beyond that granted to the other races.

Though they held the gems of the suns, the creatures were lost without the song, an orchestra without a conductor. Each of them tried to continue singing but it was a poor imitation of what had once been the music. The suns grew dim and silent, dying of age and weariness.

The timeless creators of all things had drawn to an end. Fearing for their lives the suns hid among the stars, burrowing within the corpses of the worlds that had born them. Though the oldest and wisest of the suns still lingered, they could not return to them for fear of the silent one's abominations, able only to give each of first of races a single task, an duty till the song could return.

It was a wise action, for without the suns to slake their hunger the abominations turned upon each other and upon the servants of the silent ones, having grown too fat and greedy upon the ancient suns. But too late, it was all too late. As the suns faded from the universe the silent men turned upon their own abominations, fearing their hunger and dominion. No longer protected by the discord of abomination the silence hid their shattered gods as they hid themselves, slumbering mordant silence for fear of the dark gems.

For a time the young races found peace in their duty and their successes against the abominations and the destruction of the hiding places of the silent ones. But the fish and thorns were impatient, they wished to have the song again, to touch the face of the divine. They forged a gateway to go beyond the paths of the web and into the ocean of stars beyond. It was the place that had birthed the starts in the time before time. Greedily and foolishly they opened a door that should never have been, unleashing the songs of dominion. The universe, having long battled silence, had no defense for the sea of screams.

So eager to hear the song again were the fish and flowers that it was too late that they realized the song was corrupting them.

Those who'd waited for the choir most eagerly became easy prey for the dominion of screams, mindless servants to it's howling. The silent ones and their hiding places were lost as the vast ocean of the stars became a blood bath anew, the oldest and youngest of races suffering from the screams with equal measure. Only the arachnids in their hidden places were free of the danger, their otherworldly nature and preternatural caution protecting them from harm. The gems were turned upon each other as the children of the suns and the dominion of screams battled to rob each other of knowledge and territory, ending only when the fish managed to crush the bridge to the ocean beyond.

The golden manta looked at him with tired fish eyes and a man's face, crooning in sorrow. Though there were no words Abbas felt the lamentation of the countless dead and suffering, the desire for order and the knowledge that it would never come again. It spoke as it sang, it's lips not seeming to matter to the song, "_You must know. You must learn. Listen to the music, not the song."_

Before he could remember exactly where he'd heard the unnerving reverberating echo of a voice before, Abbas awoke in a cold sweat. His head had collided jarringly with the floor as a set of agumentic hands yanked the mattress out from under him. Winking the stars from his eyes he stared blearily up at Magos Frist and said, "The fish was singing to me."

"The wine was singing to you if you thought I'd forget about your assignments boy. You'd better have finished them _all_ if you think you can go about napping instead of coming to me with them," She jibed caustically, "I'll have to hide you and Orr both. Being an apprentice to a Magos is not some cake-walk for indolent princelings to ignore until luck and social obligation puts them in a position of power."

Orr looked nervously at Abbas. Abbas knew all too well that the poor boy had likely decided not to wake him out of simple courtesy. His kindness would not be replayed in kind. Abbas clutched his data slate to his chest, "I would prefer that you gave me both Orr's beating and my own for my mistakes."

Orr's eye's bulged in horror as Magos Frist sighed and snagged his data slate with an augmentic tentacle. She ran a finger across the scroll bar, looking over his answers in total silence before meeting his eyes, "How on earth did you do this?"

Abbas opened his mouth to explain that he just couldn't figure out what Magos Dexxira'tel meant about the data systems having their own minds, though lacking their own will, when he recognized that he in fact did have an answer to that. Actually, it seemed that in his sleep all the words about his technical manual seemed to have reverted from incoherent symbols into plain English on his tongue. Nobody was more surprised than Abbas when he pulled out a pen and started drawing out his own ideal database hierarchy of specialized logic engines and knowledge spirits, and how he wanted to integrate them with Babylon systems.

He hummed to himself as he worked, discussing his ideas with Orr and the Magos, the threat of a whipping apparently forgotten in favor of her beloved machines. The music, older than time itself, gave purpose to his quill strokes bringing the knowledge into focus with greater acuity.

Abbas was proud that he would one day be a Magos, but knowledge was useless without a goal. Worthless by itself. He now had a goal, a borrowed wonderful memory from a dream as clear as day. By hook or by crook he would find the beautiful music once again.

* * *

Osma sipped from the glass of water offered by Medicus Nor, glad for the hydration. The Inquisitor had been very specific in Osma's orders, wait with his apprentice till he returned for her. The fiery alliance woman needed little in the way of protection but Inquisitorial protocol required that someone be there in case of an emergency.

Apprentice Ivanova was well enough, the taproot essence that she drank was intended to induce dreamless sleep, but she'd dehydrated herself greatly in the effort to fend off her attacker. She lay peacefully on the crisp white sheets of a hospital bed with an IV drip in her arm with some basic nutrients to avoid any side effects from the prolonged sleep.

"She's a pistol that one," Nor laughed as he pushed a stethoscope within the crisp white fabric of his smock, "I'll be lucky if she doesn't pop me in the nose when she wakes up, just on principal."

"Her enthusiasm is well placed," Osma grumbled in agreement, "It is good that she was not seriously harmed."

"A miracle actually. " Nor brandished a clipboard in disgust, "Someone was feeding that poor simpleton Rabal series six anti-agapics."

"Rabal series six? You're sure?" Osma blinked in surprise. Rabal series six anti agapics were not common, even in the nobility. Without substantial complimentary medications and augmentics the side effects were often deeply unfortunate.

"I ran the blood tests twice to be sure. It's series six," Nor sighed in resignation, "It's not the first time I've seen it either. It's been popping up on a number of autopsies of men the Inquisitor had previously been eying as potential Amon partisans. For that matter it showed up in the Inquisitor's combat servitor."

"The traitors are selling anti-agapics for loyalty," Osma tugged at his beard in frustration. Imperial medicine could achieve miracles, but few could afford the best of them. Immortality and vitality were powerful motivators for crewmen to betray their crewmen, "Blood of the Emperor, can we even _test_ for this?"

"For the regular crewmen? Most certainly. But it's very difficult to tell the difference between one type of anti-agapic and the next prior to autopsy if they've ever been treated at all," Nor sighed, "Fools will take whatever they believe will save their lives, even at the cost of their souls."

"The Butcher, Rik, wasn't responsible for his actions then?" Osma growled, "A side effect of the Amon Sui? The Lionhearts will be glad for that."

"I cannot say one way or the other for sure. Cairn didn't leave me a great deal to examine, but what little Susan said before passing out sounds like a classic case of uncontrolled spontaneous neural interactions," He interlocked his fingers wiggling them together then jammed them together hard, overlapping long digits over the back of his hands, "Without augmentic implants to sort the information being input into his mind he simply overlaid all information and was driven mad."

"His caretaker was trying to medicate him, exchanging favors for anti-agapics," Osma sighed, "He truly wished for Rik be healed."

"At best the missing parts of his mind could have been replaced with Augmentics but that sect of the clergy believes that brain implants are too close to thinking machines," Nor's lip curved down in displeasure, "There is a reason why Medicus must train for decades before we're allowed to administer surgeries and medicines unsupervised. A well meaning amateur can do _far_ more harm than good. Which is actually something I've been meaning to speak to you about."

"Oh," Osma blinked in surprise, "About what? I've been giving the boy his medicine for his cough on time without anything from the apothecary, strictly following your instructions."

"What? Oh! No, I'm sure you are," Nor laughed and patted him on the shoulder, "You're shaping up to be a good father Osma, have no fear. No I wanted to speak to you of the first mate."

"Enzo?" Osma raised an eyebrow in surprise, "What of him?"

"Not him specifically. " Nor rolled the words around in his mouth as though unsure how to proceed, "His daughter."

"I was under the impression that she was recovering quite nicely." Osma asked, "Is there something she needs me to deal with?"

"Osma this is a matter of some delicacy," Nor sighed, "A matter that I only can trust to you if you will swear not to bring it to the Inquisitor. Not without finite proof."

"Nor," Osma grunted in a voice of increasing worry. Nor was not a man prone to exaggeration but the fear in his voice was palpable, "What is it?"

"Osma, Bonafila should have to died three weeks ago. I was prepared to discuss funeral arrangements with her parents when one day, out of the blue, she starts getting better by leaps and bounds." Nor sighed, "They called it a miracle, as did I. But now..."

"Now you suspect it might have been a chemically assisted miracle," Osma swore loudly, "_Throne of Terra_. Donat Enzo a traitor? Are you sure?"

"Bonafila is his only child and I know he blames himself for not spending enough time with his daughter after she was initially injured. Sáclair had to all but threaten to throw him in the brig to keep him on duty," Nor sighed, "Men have done more foolish things for less."

"Do you have any proof?" Osma growled, tugging at his beard in worry. He could not afford to proceed with an investigation of this magnitude without absolute and concrete proof of Donat Enzo's involvement in this.

"Of course not or I would have given it to you before suggesting this at all," Nor sighed, "But Rik's condition only re-enforced the necessity that this be investigated. It's too dangerous to let continue."

"Blood of the Emperor," Hissed Osma as the possibilities of Enzo becoming affiliate with the Amon Sui ran through his mind, "It would be the end of us all."

"Yes," Nor agreed, "The end."

The room shuddered with the sudden squelching feel of ice and filth seeping into Osma's marrow, like being dredged out of a squalid pool in winter. He gritted his teeth and shook his head to un-pop his ears. No matter how often he did it the transition from the warp back to real space was deeply unpleasant.

The Inquisitor's apprentice stat up bold upright at the sensation, angrily ripping out the tubes from her arm as she turned to Osma, "What in the hell was that?"

"The ship has just returned to real-space," Osma checked his chronometer, "Damn and blast. The Inquisitor want's you to be in the landing party with him. Get dressed, you're about to meet up with the Centauri and Narn."

* * *

Al'Ashir stared up at the double-headed eagle mounted on the wall. It was welded from debris of their battle with the demon, it made up in significance what it lacked in material worth. The room was tiny, barely four yards by ten, and the only furniture to speak of was an aging wooden podium that barely held his prayer book but it was a space for His Word.

And the Word would be heard.

For a couple of medium weight golden thrones he'd negotiated for a grocer to deliver supplies before and after every prayer service so that all who came to hear the word might leave with their bellies full. Far too few of the Lurkers had regular access to healthy meals for Al'Ashir's liking.

His first services had been given to mostly empty rooms, a few of the especially devoted Imperial ex-pats bothered to make the long trip down to his church twice a day but most had chosen to pray at their personal shrines if they bothered to pray at all. Fighter pilots were a notoriously private lot, choosing to worship their favored saints by flying rather than prostration.

Fortunately the possibility of a warm meal did not long go unnoticed by the poorer residents of the babylon station, even at the cost of a sermon. He spoke of loving one's fellow man and of the great saints, telling of battles and heroes of the Empire. It was unlikely that Al'Ashir would convert them all but each soul that listened to the Word was that much closer to salvation. They giggled at his poor English and Inerlac but it was well received over all.

What continued to surprise Al'Ashir more than anything was the unsupervised, and sometimes parentless, children who ran wild in the lower sections of the ship. What sort of a station had no school? How could generations of station dwellers be expected to do their job if they could not so much as read or write their own names. Once his congregation got up and running he _would_ establish a school, sooner rather than later.

However it was neither the flow of parishioners nor the lack of education that troubled Al'Ashir in his new role as Bishop of Babylon. It was the xenos. It was on a lesser feast-day morning of Second Vec'so, a martyr famous for having protected his world from an Eldar attack, that Al'Ashir noticed something troubling.

There was a xenos in his church, listening to his sermon. Al'Ashir supposed it was to be expected on a station where the xenos mingle so close to their human betters, but it was not the xeno's presence that unnerved him greatly. It was the questions the xenos asked of him after the service. The Markab had questioned him on the nature of sin and repentance, asking him genuinely provocative questions.

By all rights he should have just cast the beast out of his rectory and told it to ask it's own unnatural gods of such things, but he did not. He and the Markab chatted about their respective faiths for hours after the service. The next service there were three Markab attending.

And they were by no means the only ones. Statuesque and lithe Vree and well coiffed Brakiri found their way into his flock, listening politely to his sermons out of curiosity or hunger. What unnerved him the most, however, were the xenos who came to his sermons _with_ the Imperial ex-pats. There was at least one Minbari who always showed up with a broad shouldered pilot of Amon stock by the name of Kegg, chatting with him and laughing about some private joke between the two of them.

However there was trouble on the horizon for him. He could be sure of that. Galut was already trying to convince Al'Ashir to baptize some of the Drazi into the Imperial faith. Precisely how he'd convinced the handful of Drazi to agree to baptism was beyond him. He'd only narrowly managed to dissuade the Drazi and Galut by telling them that he wanted them to learn the word of the Emperor in full before he was willing to baptize them.

He'd hoped it would make the problem go away but it seemed to have only delayed the inevitable. The Drazi followed Galut to services, listening to sermons, waiting for their religious education to be complete. If only all human devotees were that dedicated, the Horus Heresy might not have been.

His subtle hints to Galut had been totally useless. The Drazi liked Galut. Galut liked the Drazi. They were his friends and he wanted the best for them, "They good. They deserve heaven. Help them."

Though the Word was in Galut's heart heart His Way and His Word seemed to be at odds. The Imperial credo held little room for his desires. "Do not trust the xenos for he will approach you with honeyed words and false promises, he will lead you to ruin."

But the more time Al'Ashir spent with the xenos the less literally he wanted to interpret that passage. Was that the danger in trusting the xenos or in trusting the _wrong_ xenos? Was it wrong for the Imperials to treat the xenos with the same dignity the xenos showed them?

The credo also gave warnings against witches but the Empire employed billions of them as astropaths, navigators and even psychic Inquisitors. If they could co-exist with the psychics then why not with the xenos? No, that was a sin to even think. But it was a sin that was long past he supposed. In accepting the aid from the Centauri were not the members of the _Endless Bounty_ already branded as xenos lovers?

No, no sane man could brand them as traitors for surviving just as no sane man would criticize him for bringing the word of the Emperor to those who would hear it willingly. It was not the fault of the xenos that they were born of the wrong mothers. There was good in these xenos, perhaps enough that they could even find some measure of salvation.

And who was he to rob them of salvation?

* * *

The settlement on the moon of Vega Six Segunda was spartan even back when it had been lived in by its Centauri colonists. Decades of neglect had left the verdant world to its own devices, letting the thick green vines with red leaves grow over the white stone surfaces of prefabricated dwellings in natural camouflage. Brightly colored songbirds nested the myriad of overgrown flower-boxes, twittering warning calls to each other as Londo passed them.

"They're beautiful aren't they Ambassador Mollari," G'Kar said from where he lay in the shade an old tree, idly thumbing through his prayerbook.

"The birds? Yes." Londo agreed, sitting on the edge of what had once been a fountain, "It is just as well that neither of our people took this place. We would have destroyed this beauty for the sake of denying it to each other."

"I imagine this was what my world looked like before your people came. I've seen pictures, of course, but this?" he waved his arms at the omnipresent flowers, "_This _is how I pray it was. And how I pray it will be."

"G'Kar," Londo replied in annoyance, "Have we been to cordial for the past several days? Do you feel the need to bring out bad blood for old time's sake?"

"Nothing of the sort Mollari. Nothing of the sort." G'Kar stood up from the ground, brushing the back of his trousers, "I'm just enjoying the irony of your solution to the Vega Six problem. You do realize that I had to propose it as a way of getting "one up" on the Centauri?"

"I would be very surprised if you hadn't. There are a number of Centauri politicians doubtlessly waiting for their agents on Narn to inform them of the inevitable Narn outrage," Londo shrugged, "I had expected it to take more effort to be honest."

"Both our governments are eager to ingratiate themselves with the Imperial government," G'Kar nodded, "And both of us have our personal reasons for wanting the Imperials to go unharmed."

"I'm just looking out for the interests of my people," Londo insisted, though the pleased thanks of Mr. Morden repeated in the back of his mind, "I have no ulterior motive."

"Ambassador you brought the Narns with you to fight the Vorlon Empire. Now I haven't been able to figure out how or why you knew it was coming but whatever game you're playing I know that it is _you_ who features chiefly in your interests." G'Kar held up his gloved finger and tapped the side of his forehead, "I'm not a fool Mollari. But for now, as long as your goals coincide with my own, I'm willing to go along with it."

"Very well," Londo hissed sarcastically, "By all means live out our conspiracy fantasies. In the meanwhile prepare yourself. Unless I miss my guess that is an Imperial shuttle on the horizon."

The Narn and Centauri soldiers milling about the plaza hopped to attention, standing around the hexagonal cement landing pad at attention in a guard of honor. They may have been on an uncivilized scrap of nowhere but neither race would embarrass themselves in front of the other with less than perfect manners. Admittedly there were a great many more hateful red-eyed stares from the Narn style of politeness than Londo felt were strictly necessary but one could not expect perfection from a Narn.

Four ships zoomed into view, the bird-like transport ship of the Inquisitor accompanied by another two fighters that were more boxy and irregular, clearly designed for combat rather than beauty. The ugly boxy fighters took positions around the perimeter as the avian craft hovered above them, a stylized white eagle painted onto the belly of the otherwise crimson and gold craft. It swooped twice around the city before settling into the hexagon.

It was overkill, but Londo couldn't blame the Inquisitor for being cautious about meeting the two ambassadors on an unknown world. The man had recently suffered a crippling injury at the hands of the Vorlons, he was likely to be wary of alien interests. Not so wary, however, that he would refuse a meeting, thank the Maker.

The mouth of the shuttle yawned wide, extending a long metal plank down to the vine covered ground. A thin layer of smoke and steam billowed out from the opening, pressurized hypoallergenic gasses to ensure no bacteria found their way into the transport. A familiar golden skull poked out from the mists, leading a handful of colorfully dressed companions. Londo sighed at the obvious fear of alien bacterial contamination. There was taking precautions and then there was just being impolite.

"We did send them the profile for a sufficent vaccination for this planet yes?" Londo asked G'Kar as the Imperial embassy marched in their direction.

"We most certainly did," G'Kar whispered through a forced smile, "But the Imperials are worse than the Markab when it comes to ensuring the purity of their people. I'm astonished they ever take the infuriating pressure suits _off_."

"Don't tempt fate," Londo whispered before saying in a much louder voice, "Inquisitor Hilder my good friend! I had not expected to see you in person so soon after your injury."

"I'm quite well Ambassador Mollari." The Inquisitor's metallic voice reverberated. He raised an ivory finger capped with a gold talon and tapped it on the side of his helmet, "An arm can be replaced so long as the mind is whole."

A busty redhead wearing a high necked leather long-coat with stylized grinning skulls for buttons snorted and rolled her eyes. Her mouth and nose were covered by a rebreather "Daul could you possibly be more pretentious?"

G'Kar's reptilian inner eyelid slid over his red eyes, reflexively cleaning them as he sniffed the air, "Do I know you?"

"You most certainly do Ambassador. My apprentice is miss Susan Ivanova, formerly of Babylon 5," Londo gagged in surprise, his fangs flexing against his lips.

"I had been led to believe the commander died in the attack," Londo hedged uneasily around the obvious question. Outright asking if the commander had defected seemed ill advised, "They officially listed you as missing in action."

"We are u...unable to c...communicate with real-space while we are in transit," The Inquisitor's diminutive aid replied, "W...we could not correct such an error."

Susan looked as though she very much would have liked to say something but a stern look passed between her and the skull-faced telepath. Londo got the distinct impression that a conversation was passing between the two of them. Susan stared daggers at the mask for a moment then gritted her teeth as she hissed, "You unbelievable son of a bitch. _This _is why you brought me here?"

Londo winced at her astringent acrimony. The scrupulously professional Commander was quivering with rage as the Inquisitor calmly rejoined, "Truth does not go away with time."

"And what truth is that Inquisitor?" G'Kar sighed in exasperation.

If looks could kill the Inquisitor would have been a small pile of ashes upon the ground. Another round of meaningful looks passed between the Inquisitor and the buxom redhead before Commander Ivanova pulled off her mask and spoke in a tone drizzled with a thick layer of sarcasm, "I've been generously accepted by the Inquisitor as his apprentice."

G'Kar and Londo shared a look of confusion that was not missed by the Inquisitor, "I found it unacceptable for her psychic talents to go to waste and dangerous for them to go untrained. Certianly not for a psychic with such impressive psychic potential."

"What!" Squawked Londo in horror. Great Maker, he'd spent two years around a psychic without ever having the vaguest hint of it. The possible fallout was horrifying. How many of his secrets did she know? How many other Earth Alliance officers were secret telepaths? He'd grown accustomed to the Earther's telepathic apartheid but how much of his security measures were in error?

G'Kar seemed more intrigued that horrified, "Commander Ivanova is this true?"

"Yes," The Commander replied with a level of vulnerability Londo had rarely heard from the Russian. It was like listening to a small child admit to a mistake they'd long hoped forgotten, "I'm a telepath, like my mother before me."

"How can this be?" G'Kar all but whispered, putting his gloved hand upon Susan's arm in a gesture of solidarity, "I thought that all members of the Earthforce were tested?"

"I wasn't strong," Susan admitted, "Barely a P-1, it didn't take much for them to overlook me."

"The talents of the Psi-corps are astonishingly limited," The Inquisitor interjected, his reverberating voice abounding with professional pique, "Having examined a half dozen men and women trained by them it's become clear to me they understand almost nothing of warp-craft. To allow a mind so readily prepared for the biomantic and pyromantic arts to go by the wayside for a lack of telepathic finesse is utter madness. Telepathy is only one of a million skills. They struggle to understand telekinesis and fancy themselves the masters of sorcery. Bah!"

"Not everyone can bend the forces of nature about their finger Hildy," Replied an irritated woman. Unclad except for a sheer white sheet, her ebon skin glowed with the dull golden glow of active astropathy from an intricate patchwork of runes and circuitry, "And even those who can tend to lack your _unique_ insights into the subject. The sisters of silence aren't especially fond of people researching the subject if memory serves."

"Captain Sáclair I presume?" Londo bowed deferentially. He really did like the bombastic letch, the time would not come soon enough that they would meet in person, "Would it be possible for us to get our crewmen back? My assistant in particular has been greatly missed. Don't tell him though, a competent assistant who realizes his necessity soon becomes unbearable."

"But of course," The woman remarked offhandedly as she locked arms with Londo and marched him towards the ship, "Your men are already being transported back to your ships. And unless I miss my – Ah yes! Here comes young Mr. Cotto."

Londo's portly assistant waddled his way out of the Imperial transport with the aid of a large and particularly ugly Narn, a greenish tint of airsickness about him. The astropathic servitor leaned in closely and whispered conspiratorially, "Between the two of us I like the lad but he's a bit queasy around the bends. I wouldn't put him at the helm of anything larger than a ground car."

"His continuing survival is something of a mystery, yes," Londo agreed before shouting to his assistant, "Vir! That's quite enough stalling. Your little vacation is over. It is time to work."

"Vacation?" His assistant rolled shifted his eyes back towards the transport as though her were considering the merits of going back to the _Endless Bounty_ and never returning, but common sense overruled his fear of the Ambassador. Vir exhaustedly plodded forward, distinctly the worse for ware. His coat, still the same one he'd left the babylon station wearing, had been hastily sewn together after being slit and his shirt was flecked with a mix of soot and something that resembled blood. "I think I'm done with vacations. Forever."

"Just as well, you have none left to use," Londo growled irritatedly, grinning and patting his assistant on the back jovially, "I am glad to see you well and whole Vir. To my great surprise I do in truth enjoy your company," he lowered his voice, "And you will be wanted on the home-world soon."

"Good," Vir determinedly agreed, "Yes that sounds very good."

"Th... this is actually a very n...nice planet," commented the hunch-backed auto-savant Jak as he poked at the flora with a small sliver box, a scanner of some sort, "Lush and fertile. Why is it uninhabited?"

"History and luck," G'Kar waved at the surrounding settlement, "This was formerly an outspost when the Centauri slavers were transporting my people. We drove them out, then abandoned it because of where it fell along our supply chains."

"We _drew_ you to it so that you would make such a foolish over-expansion," Londo corrected, "But even the Narn occasionally make a tactically sound decision."

"Ah," The Inquisitor sighed, "You do not want to risk offering us shelter and having the Vorlons declare war upon you. Clever."

"Partially," G'Kar admitted, pulling a data-pad from his satchel and handing it to the Inquisitor, "But we've expanded our goals since then."

"What is this?" The Inquisitor skimmed the contents of the data-pad before handing them off to Commander Ivanova.

The Commander's jaw dropped, "They're settling rights. _Unconditional _settling rights from both the Centauri and Narn governments to this solar system," Susan looked at the Narn and Centauri Ambassador's in utter bafflement, "You're just _giving_ them a solar system without asking for anything in return?"

"Of course he isn't," Sáclair's Avatar laughed, "This scrap of space is part of the demilitarized zone between their peoples isn't it? They want to use us as a barrier to cut off both sides from using this place as a military staging point. A wall between two predators."

"Among other benefits," Londo replied, "There's nothing to be lost in turning what was previously a dead world into an new economic trading partner."

"Very well then," The Inquisitor nodded once, "If Jak finds nothing wrong with your contract I will graciously accept. The Belzafesters have been going stir crazy onboard the Bounty anyway."

"They were ill-suited spacers to begin with. I'll start moving them into the settlement while you finish up down here," Sáclair sighed freezing and leaning to the left, the woman's body going limp and falling to the ground in suddenly suspended animation. The servitor crumpled to the ground like a limp marionette.

"I hate when he does that," Londo shuddered as he looked into the suddenly dead and glassy eyes of what had only moments ago been a living and breathing woman, "It's just unnatural."

"I suspect that's why he doesn't warn us," Sighed the Inquisitor, "He's up there on his throne giggling about our facial expressions, I just know it," he shook his golden skull, apparently embarrassed to have spoken out of turn, "You've shown me a great deal of faith, now I shall return it in kind. I will accept a Narn and Centauri into my service to serve as the representatives of your people in the Empire. Mr. Cotto has already -"

"Vir!" Londo hissed, "What have you done?"

"I didn't know that – I mean – I er, what?" His assistant sputtered nervously, "He just told me I was the Ambassador, I didn't say anything."

"I will accept no others and I will not hear a word of argument against it," The Inquisitor nodded, "Mr. Cotto has agreed to enter my retinue. A great honor that puts him in the highest court of the Empire."

"Mr. Cotto _has_ a role in government. _My_ government. The _Centauri_ government," Londo corrected the Imperial, "One that requires he be with me at all times. He cannot exactly aid the embassy if he isn't around the Ambassador."

"Ambassador, I am offering a permanent Centauri mission on this planet but I will accept no other diplomat than Mr. Cotto," Inquisitor Hilder repeated firmly, "I trust him, well him and you. But we both know you have no desire to leave Babylon Five."

"Very well then," Londo sighed in grudging acquiescence, "I accept your offer."

"What – but he – huh?" Vir repeated in utter bafflement, "Me?"

"Yes, you're an Ambassador to the Empire now, don't let it go to your head," Londo patted his baffled aide on the back, "You look positively green Vir you should sit down."

"What – oh yeah, sitting," His horrified aide replied, plopping down on the ground in confusion, "Sitting is good."

"I have no specific request for the Narn Ambassador," The Inquisitor admitted to G'Kar, "Just someone who isn't prone to confrontation."

"I have several in mind," G'Kar admitted, "But we have another matter to discuss that is more important. I received troubling news as we were in transit."

"Yes," Londo admitted, "The Non-Aligned worlds are comitted to a peace keeping operation in the Shi'lassen Triumvirate in co-operation with the Earth Alliance, Narn Empire and Centauri Republic. As a member race of the Non-Aligned worlds you are expected to aid in peacekeeping effort."

"The Empire does _not_ go to war on the whims of other nations," The Inquisitor whispered in a voice of deadly calm, the wisps of balefire flickering around him blazing white-hot.

"I think you'll want to," G'Kar replied, "Our old friends have decided to show themselves. An army of monsters rallying behind the banner of one they only call Faust."

The ground beneath the Inquisitor cracked as he mashed his long range communicator and outright bellowed, "Sáclair! Mobilize the Lionhearts. We go to _war!"_

* * *

Delenn walked to the center of the council chambers, no longer Satai. Stripped of rank but not honor, Delenn wore her ambassadorial uniform like a suit of armor. Striding into the center of the circle with great pride in her heart, she stood in the pale blue light at the center of the circle and spoke, "For twenty cycles I stood beside you as one of the nine. I called many of you friends. And now you call me outcast. You know me. You know I believe in the task that is before us, the great war that is coming. I have not turned my back on you."

Delenn turned from grey robed hood to grey robed hood, trying to catch a stray eye or a hint of emotion. There was none to be found, " I'm trying to help. I have sacrificed all that I had, all that I am. We can no longer allow ourselves to be separated by names and borders. Our two sides must unite or be destroyed. Do not make my sacrifice a vain one."

The Minbari Ambassador closed her eyes in silent prayer that they'd listen, "Allow me to finish what I have started. In the name of our friendship and the future of our people let me remain on Babylon 5."

"I'm more than happy to have you returned to remain with the humans," replied a snide and hateful voice.

"You are the one who was chosen to replace me?" Delenn turned to face the robed man, "I do not know you."

"I believe you do," The man pulled back his cowl, revealing an altogether too familiar face.

"Neroon?" Delenn asked, flabbergasted at the choice. She turned to the council, pleading with them. "I do not understand! He is warrior caste from the Star Rider's clan."

She looked from face to face as each hood turned from her, shying away from her in guilt. None dared meet her eye, "What are you doing? When Valen called the nine together he chose three from the worker caste, three from the religious caste, and three from the warrior caste. My replacement should have been from the religious caste."

Delenn realized she was shouting and did not care, "Four from the warrior caste gives them unprecedented power."

"And why not?" Neroon rejoined, his face bathed shadow and hatred, "It was the warrior caste who died in the war against the Earthers. Warrior caste who have defended our worlds for centuries while the council floated among the stars. Isolated from it's own people."

"This is wrong," Delenn's voice cracked with fury.

"Is it," Neroon replied with terrifying calm, "You say prophecy tells us a great war is coming. Should not the warrior caste lead against it."

"The Warrior caste cannot be allowed to set policy." Such a road led to war and destruction. History had proven that well enough.

"Have you done any better," Neroon eyed Delenn with dismissive disgust, "When I was inducted into this circle I was finally told the reason we were ordered to surrender. I didn't know whither to laugh or weep," he shook with visible anger, "If we had been told the truth then we _never_ would have surrendered."

"You do not understand," Delenn pleaded with Neroon to listen, to see the wisdom of her words.

"I see perfectly," He dismissed her entirely, "That you stand before me as a creature I do not recognize. One put in two worlds, you are an affront to the purity of our race. And your assertion that you are fulfilling prophecy is presumption of the highest order."

He rose his fingers in admission as his words rung in her ears, echoing the hateful words of Ambassador Hilder from so long ago, "And yet it is true that you are now the perfect liaison between us and the Earthers. You have no home with either of us. So please, act out your fantasy. Be our go-between. Return to what little of babylon five remains, and stay there."

The room went to darkness, leaving Delenn alone in the pale blue light. She stood there alone as the council members walked away from her back to their quarters. Neroon will have moved into her quarters by then, boxing what belongings were hers and sending them to Lenneir. Her lip curled at the thought of that bull-headed cretin in her quarters. It wasn't an especially wise thought, but it was an honest one.

She nursed thoughts of unpleasant things that Neroon deserved before reason returned and she let go of her hatred. Neroon was not to blame for her situation, she was. She knew that ignoring the council would have consequences, but she had chosen to do it anyway. This was her choice, her path. She would walk it.

She walked from the Chamber of the Grey, walking the familiar path down to a garden in one of the public areas, her set meeting place for Lenneir. It was a tiny little bit of green space, barely eight feet by ten feet wide, but Valen had insisted that there be a bit of green space around for troubled minds to find peace. She sat on a narrow bit of flat stone and stared at an ancient tree. Its meticulously clipped and shaped branches curved into a beautiful sculpture of a bird in flight, winking and mischievously perking its beak.

A firm hand rested on her shoulder as a calm voice spoke in pleasant tones, "Hello old friend. We have a great deal to do."

* * *

The galactic rim was a place full of wonder and mystery beyond man's comprehension. Even the most minor of discoveries beyond the rim were of such cosmic importance that the commander of an Explorer ship lived in perpetual intrigue. Each jump led to a new place never before viewed by human eyes, virgin territory for scientific exploration or economic exploitation. Explorer ships were tasked with the duty of discovering new space and building new jump gates, spending years or even decades at the edge of the unknown.

Captain Jack Maynard took command of the EAS _Cortez_ in 2254 and, god willing, would captain it untill the day he died. Like its namesake, the _Cortez_ was destined to break new ground and conquer the unknown. Admittedly the unknown's Jack favored were scientific rather than sapient. It was just as well, explorer ships were heavy on mass but notably lacking in weapons. If their mission required heavier armaments than a handful of Starfuries, they were in for a nasty surprise.

Not that their Starfuries were anything but the best of the best, Zeta Squadron had originally been intended as a gift to Babylon 5. In light of the rather startling redirect from repairing the Euphrates Sector Jump Gates to the edge of Drazi space they had understandably been transferred to his command. It had taken some effort to get Ray Gallus and his men into suitable accommodations. They had, after all, only been planning on just transporting them to Babylon Five. However with a little gumption and a bit of creative re-arranging of the current cargo situation they'd managed to get everyone living in reasonable comfort.

As per the President's orders the EAS _Cortez_ was scouring the sector where the Imperials had first shown up for signs of their place of origin. It was no mean feat considering that the Imperials were reportedly equally ignorant of local stellar geography, but a thrilling one for Jack, "I cannot possibly imagine what their home planet looks like. Can you?"

Commander Steven Jonas, a slight man with a distinct overbite and a pronounced lisp, looked up from the chess board balanced on the small mess hall table. His hand, paused in movement above a white rook, did not so much as shake as he considered his options, "The Imperials you mean?"

"Who else?" Jack chuckled in a deep baritone, "Every time we jump we're getting closer to them, I can taste it."

"I suspect it looks a great deal like their paintings of it. You've seen the history they gave us," The Commander smiled and moved his bishop, taking Jack's knight before tapping the clock, "Massive cities, lots of people in robes, and a whole mess of skulls."

"We know what the idealized image of how they want to represent themselves looks Steve. They're all religiously idealized images of their society. Praying to the great gods and paragons to save them from evil," Jack convivially jibed as he pushed his pawn forward in an effort to force the bishop to retreat, "But that isn't how their whole society looks like any more than a painting from the wall of a church shows all of the human colonies."

"You notice how all of their saints are carrying guns?" Commander Jonas moved his knight behind Jack's pawn, taking a bishop and forcing him to block with his queen, "Including their emperor? I would have paid _way_ more attention in confirmation class if Jesus had been packing a PPG."

"Even the Catholic church tends to show angels with swords and spears. I think they just happen to have a religion founded more recently than the bronze age. If they'd crucified Jesus in the Cold War we'd be painting Angels in green fatigues with M-14s," Jack moved out of check and took a rook that strayed too close to his king, "I'm just looking forward to making first contact with their planet."

"Sir we've jumped a hundred times so far without doing more than a passive scan of the sector. The techs aren't loving that. You know they consider a trip a failure without having at least spent a day collecting samples," With a little flourish Commander Jonas took Jack's pawn off the table, moving his queen into position with a satisfied flourish, "They're going a bit stir crazy."

"I understand their frustrations," Jack sighed and moved his king, knowing full well the next move would be checkmate, "But orders are orders. Clark wants the Empire found as soon as possible, proper cartography be damned. We're lucky he hasn't got all the Explorer ships out here doing the same thing."

"It's just that we need to have them doing _something_ other than just sitting around on their hands. I've been talking with some of the pilots and they want to organize a basketball tournament," Jonas moved his knight again, checkmating Jack's king with great satisfaction.

"Basketball?" Jack repeated.

"Yes sir, it's a sport that none of the men onboard are spectacularly skilled at and it doesn't require any specialized gear other than the ball," The commander pointed above his head in the general direction of the cargo bay, "And we have about a hundred of them that were destined for Babylon Five that are just eating a hole in our cargo bay at the moment."

"Alright Steven, if you can get the players it sounds fine to me," Jack started to speak when his communications badge chirruped loudly. He tapped it and held it up to his mouth, "Captain Maynard speaking."

"Captain we need you on the bridge," the comms officer cheerily replied, "There's a ship on the other side of the planet that just popped out of nowhere. The radiation profile conforms with what we know about the Imperial method of travel. And sir... it's the biggest ship I've ever seen. Just massive. The sensors actually missed it for a couple hours because they were glitching out every time they tried to focus on it."

"Send them the standard greeting package with an additional message of greeting in high gothic on microwave transmission," Jack stood up from the table and started walking towards the main corridor of the ship, "I'll be there in five."

He deactivated his link and held out his hand. Steven looked at it in annoyance, "We don't know it's them yet."

"Shut up and pay up Steven," Jack smiled, "I won."

His second in command reluctantly shoved five credits into Jack's hand as the two of them sprinted in the direction of the Command deck. The Explorer ship was massive, as large as an O'Neill class station. There was a good quarter mile of ship between them and the command deck not to mention two flights of stairs.

"The next one of these gets an elevator," huffed Steven as they rounded a corner and started ascending the ladder to deck 12, "And a transport tube."

"Take it up with the Senate," wheezed Jack, "I'm totally in favor of it."

Steven opened his mouth to give a sarcastic reply but fell flat on his face as the floor beneath him shoot with a sudden burst of kinetic impact. He yelped in pain as his knees met deck plates, "Jesus!"

Grabbing onto the ship's cargo webbing for support Jack screamed into his link, "What the hell was that?"

"Sir," replied the horrified voice of the comms officer, "They just fired on us after ordering us to surrender. Those were torpedo impacts."

"Damage report!" The commander rubbed the blood from his nose as he spoke into his own link, reaching over to the wall and breaking the glass on the emergency condition alarm hanging from the wall. The hall lights switched from white to red, blaring klaxons warning the crew to get to safety.

"Sir none of the torpedoes have exploded, they bored into the side of the ship then stopped. No major damage to the ship," the floor bucked again, struts shaking from the force of another impact, "Belay that. Our engines are down, I repeat our engines and docking bay are down. We've taken a direct hit from a laser battery of some sort. Critical damage across the board."

"Why would they fire munitions that don't explode when they already have effective weapons?" Jack chewed his lip, "There's no reason for that – unless," Jack swore, "Ensign. I need you to run a life signs detector on those torpedoes."

"Sir why would I?" She paused again before replying, "Yes sir, twenty confirmed life-signs."

"Just what I need," Jack double-tapped his communications chip, "This is a general order to all crew-members of the _Cortez_. Prepare to repel boarders."

The crew rushed into action, scientists and non-combat personnel heading for the bridge as GROPOS in hastily fastened combat armor marched in the direction of the boarders. Having gone so long without actually being in combat some of them were running down the hallways half-naked and carrying plasma rifles. A private he vaguely recognized as being named Daniels ran into combat wearing nothing more than his flak armor and a pink set of boxer shorts.

"We need to get to the weapons lockers sir," Steven pulled out his side arm as he listened to the distant sound of booming gunfire echoing through the halls in a cacophony of human suffering, "Make sure that they don't fall into enemy hands."

"Of course," Jack said before correcting himself, "No, we need to get to the secondary bridge and get it into lockdown. Those munitions won't help us if they can shut down life support."

"You think they know about that sir?" Commander Jonas asked, motioning for three GROPOS in full combat armor to follow them.

"They took our our engines and flight deck faster than it took us to even realize we were in the same system. We have to assume they have scans of our ship," Jack slid back down the ladder, landing on his feet with a loud thump of combat boots on steel. This was not how first contact with the Empire was supposed to go.

They dropped three decks before they got their first sight of the boarders. They saw only the merest glimpse of retreating white pauldron bearing a black cross through the smoke, but it was enough to scare Jack senseless. Five men lay butchered in the hall, gored to death. One man, just barely on the edge of life, still twitched where he'd been pinned to the wall with a blade as long as Jack's leg set to a pommel thicker than a soda can. As the man coughed his death rattle he spat up thick globules of blood onto finger marks the size of cucumbers where a massive hand had ripped a pressure door from its hinges.

A flicker of movement caught Jack's eye and he fell to the ground, narrowly avoiding a gout of flame. "Jesus Christ!" Jack swore, crossing himself in horror before gritting his teeth and picking up a discarded phased-plasma rifle from the recent dead, "Don't just stand there! Kill the mother-fragger!"

Shrugging off the discharges of phased-plasma the massive black armored figure activated the trigger on the sword in his left hand, activating the saw tooth blades as he swung at the gut of the nearest GROPO, bursting him like a ripe melon. In a frenzy of black armor and swirling robes he spun around and roasted a second GROPO with his flamethrower, discarding it as it's fuel ran out, **"Für deus rex imperator! Für Terra!"**

The third GROPO planted in armored figures optics and fired, bursting the electronics and turning the grim mask into molted slag. With a scream of pain the man tore the helmet from his head and smashed it into the face of the remaining GROPO, crushing it.

Stephen lashed out with his combat knife, aiming for the joints of the man's armor but fell to the ground with a pained yelp as the man karate chopped him across the leg. It broke with thunderous a wet pop, dropping to the ground in pain.

Jack dropped his gun in apparent surrender, holding his hands behind his head. The armored man approached Jack, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and examining his rank pins in apparent satisfaction before holstering his sword. Apparently the Captain was important enough not to just murder him. He spoke in thunderous basso, **"Du es tu Gefangener."**

Jack looked at the dead men piled around him and pulled the plasma grenade from where he'd concealed it behind his head and smashed it into the open mouth of the armored man, "Frag you!"

The astonished man's head exploded into a bloody mess along with Jack's arm as the grenade burst with enough force to crack a bulkhead. Jack screamed in pain as he landed in a heap on the ground, clutching his bloody stump of an arm. As he scrambled to stem the flow of blood from his body he looked up and into the face of the grim reaper himself.

An armored figure, even more massive than the first, waded in through the corpses, the intricate patterns of his baroque design patterned after the skull and bones of a human being. He knelt over the headless corpse of his compatriot, saying words of prayer as he pressed down on the other man's breastplate. The Reaper examined the wounds before turning his glowing red eyes upon Jack.

Skeletal fingers grabbed hold of him and lifted him to eye level as the Reaper pulled a flamethrower pistol from his holster and held it up to Jack's stump. The Reaper fired, cauterizing the wound and tossing him back to the floor before speaking in heavily accented Interlac, **"You do not die so easy. The Emperor has a use for you."**

* * *

**A/N : There are no doubt errors in this. Please feel free to point them out to me. As always reviews are welcome. A special thanks to Nuts! on Spacebattles for working as my beta reader as always. :D**


	18. Chapter 18

Kerrigan was as happy as a child in a sweet shop. The ever-increasing pile of machinery in her workshop had only become more wondrous to her as the science of their construction was made manifest. She pored over the technical manuals with voracious fascination, curious at the simultaneous brilliance and ignorance of the Earth Alliance.

The humans of the Alliance were mechanical savants, to be sure, but their lack of empathy with the spirits of the machine left their creations wanting. Already Kerrigan had improved the function of her own quarters with a ritual to appease the machine spirit of her door. The application of ritually spiced oils and a simple data-angel into the near-mind of the door had not only boosted performance but had also convinced the machine spirit to purge all entry codes but her own. Station security would have to knock prior to entry, as was only proper.

She hadn't intended to move into the diplomatic quarters offered to her, but the shuttle was ill-suited for long term habitation, especially now that she was no longer living by herself. Her servants had finally been given a clean bill of health, so it was for their sake more than hers that she had moved her effects out of her shuttle and into a spacious apartment in Green sector.

It was not without its own charm.

Kerrigan picked at a bowl of chocolate covered fruit given to her by General Hague, some sort of citrus native to the Alliance home-world, eagerly chewing on the tangy rind as she examined the device in her mechandrite. It was a chip no larger than her thumb, a simple communication device no more rare or exciting than the average survey auspex in the Imperium. However, to Kerrigan it was a thing of beauty.

It meant an end to her exile. It was not an STC, but its importance was so great that it would not matter.

A real-time subspace transmitter. Throne, but if she could even get one of these back to the Imperium, it might well change the tide of history forever. Stable interplanetary communication that did not rely on the warp was little more than wishful thinking and fiction in the Imperium, meaning that a transmission could arrive days or even centuries later than its sender intended. Even more bizarrely, messages at times arrived prior to their submission, resulting in several baffling situations where ships responded to their own distress calls.

The Alliance communicated between their home-world and their outlying colonies in real-time, and Kerrigan knew how they did it and understood how to construct a hyperspace engine. The Adeptus Mechanicus no longer was beholden to the Warp.

Not that she could do anything with this wealth of knowledge, as without a Warp-capable ship and a Navigator to course correct she had no route back to the Imperium. There was no hyperspace gate network to make use of in the Imperium that she knew of. She had, of course, constructed a distress beacon to summon any Adeptus Mechanicus ships that should happen to be passing, but she doubted they would ever come.

The key to the Imperium's return to glory sat between her fingers, and she could do nothing more than sit and wait. In spite of this it was hard to feel frustrated, not with so much to be learned. She busied herself with learning the workings of the Alliance machines and with training her apprentices in the proper ways of the Machine God. Their aptitude for the science vastly outstripped their humility for the greatness of the Omnissah's works, but she supposed that humbleness only came with age.

Abbas certainly had little to be humble about. Whatever that boy might have done on the _Endless Bounty _would have been a shameful waste of his talents. She'd never seen someone take to mathematics and engineering as quickly as he did, understanding the materials with a nearly instinctive fervor. He might well be qualified for the rank of Magos in a matter of decades rather than centuries.

"Ma'am," the craggly voice of her auto-savant Regulus interjected, "I believe you have an appointment in the med-bay."

Kerrigan looked to her chronometer and blinked in surprise, yelping in shock, "Throne, is it time already?"

She gingerly placed the subspace transmitter onto her desk and shimmied out of her oil-stained robes, handing them over to Gerra as she walked into the the wide metal tub they'd replaced her bed with. Kerrigan had no need of a bed, as she didn't sleep. Gertrude came over with a stiff brush and a bucket of perfumed rose-oil, along with another one of soapy water.

The two maids were slow in scrubbing her with the rose oils and rinsing her with the water but she was not churlish enough to complain. It had only been a week since the station's Medicus, Dr. Franklin, had released them from physical therapy and allowed them to go back to work but they hadn't heard a word of her protests that they ought to be taking it easy.

So far as her servants were concerned, she was an absolute mess without their help, and they outright refused to let her get a word in edgewise when she'd tried to give them time off. All of them but the young Galen, at least, who'd been more than eager to spend time with Abbas and Orr. The young scamp had adopted her apprentices as surrogate older brothers.

She closed her eyes and shut off her optics, enjoying the sensation of the soft bristles against her flesh and within the hard-to-reach places in her augmentics. It was easy to forget just how much grit pooled at the joints of those things, until it was scrubbed away and her mechanical limbs no longer felt like they were moving through molasses.

Gerra pulled out a clean robe of soft red cotton from Kerrigan's trunk and went about the exhaustive business of threading the augmentic tentacles and servo-connections into their proper openings. The two women chatted in Low Gothic, nattering on about how much of a waste it was that Kerrigan had no intention of ever marrying and how much prettier the agumentics would look if Kerrigan would paint them bright colors. She placidly let the nonsensical discussions wash over her as the women dressed her and tied her hair into a tight bun, tying it off with a red ribbon and a comb marked with the cog of the Omnissiah.

She hugged her maids tight to her body with her arms and mechandrites, staring into their scarred faces. Kerrigan's augmentic voice choked into a sob as she said, "Omnissah, but I missed you."

Her servants hugged her back tightly before pulling away and bowing, giving Kerrigan a moment to compose herself. The Magos cleared her throat, embarrassed for the display, and nodded to Bizak, "Shall we go then?"

"Yes Magos," Bizak smiled and waved to the door with his augmentic fingers. They were the work of Dr. Franklin rather than proper Imperial augmentics, but she had to confess that the man's skill with prosthetic limbs was more than apt. She'd consecrated the augmentics just to be sure that there would be no issue and found them to be sufficient.

Kerrigan walked out the door and into the hall of green sector, carrying a heavy leather bag over her shoulder and a small satchel of surgical tools on her belt. Today would be a very special day. Abbas had finally passed his first rite of ascension and earned the rank of Adept. Certain ceremonies consequently had to be observed, as well as certain surgeries.

It was a short walk to the med-bay; Dr. Franklin's surgery had intentionally been placed where it was convenient for the ambassadors to reach it in Blue 2. Before she knew it Kerrigan was at the doctor's door, walking into the relative bustle of the best-equipped medical center on the station.

"Magos Kerrigan," Dr. Franklin greeted her coolly, his voice disapproving but not unprofessional. "It's been a while. How are my patients doing? Resting well, I hope."

"They seem to be recovering remarkably well, yes." The Alliance medicus always managed to make her feel horribly guilty for some reason. Every time she spoke with him, she had flashbacks of being caught taking sweets from the pantry as a child. "They take their medicines every four hours on the hour."

"Good, now we just need to clear up the matter of you wanting to perform a secret surgical procedure upon a minor without his parent or guardian's consent in my surgery without supervision by any doctor and we'll just be dandy," The doctor said in a tone of deadpan seriousness.

"I am his appointed guardian, and it is a necessary part of his transition into the priesthood," Kerrigan explained politely, "And it is for the adepts of the Machine God and their eyes alone."

"Then you're going to have to find someplace else to perform it. I have medical standards in my surgery, one of the most prominent of which is that unlicensed surgeons don't perform unexplained procedures without observation." The medicus crossed his arms and scowled up into Kerrigan's face.

"I have no need for an observer and assure you that I am more than qualified for this procedure," Kerrigan growled in irritation, "I will not submit to this sort of insult."

"Magos?" The young voice of Abbas spoke from where he poked his head out from the waiting room, "Why can't he observe?"

Kerrigan sighed silently. "Child, you know perfectly well why. There are some secrets that are not for those who do not worship the Omnissiah," Kerrigan replied in irritation as she shoved her rucksack into Bizak's arm. The servant let out a slight 'oof' of surprise at its weight.

"But Magos," Abbas interjected as he pointed to Bizak's hand, "Surely he already knows more than we're going to show him in the ritual. He's already implanting people with augmentics without first appeasing the machine spirits. Wouldn't it be better for him to understand the proper ritual, so that he could appease the Omnissiah when he does it next time?"

It was sound reasoning. She couldn't feasibly execute Dr. Franklin and all the other Alliance citizens for techno-heresy by herself. Converting him to at least try to appease the machine spirits he was giving life to would be the next best thing. After all, it was just the installation of augmentics rather than their fabrication. She poked her head into the sterile surgery cubicle. "I suppose it is a lesser ritual. Is Orr in there with you?"

"Yes, ma'am," replied the voice of her other apprentice, "And I brought what you asked me to bring."

"Good," Kerrigan sighed, "Dr. Franklin, I will ask you to remain silent for the ritual if you are going to insist upon being present."

The doctor nodded slightly. "I'll try."

"Very well," Kerrigan sighed. It was just one more minor heresy to add to the pile they'd accumulated so far. Just one more minor concession to take them further from orthodoxy. She did what she could because she must; there were no other options.

Kerrigan gestured to the table and Abbas stripped off his robe and climbed on it, his cotton small-clothes just barely preserving modesty. Orr waved the incense censer above her other apprentice, chanting the ritual of organized purity, much to Dr. Franklin's consternation. The Alliance medicus eyed every errant flake of incense as though they were a personal affront to his profession.

Ignoring the man's irritation, Kerrigan began to pray in binary, the harsh grating truths of the machine, "Omnissiah I stand before you today with a new child of the machines. Abbas Sáclair has come to the machine to find its order and wonder. May you find Abbas and bring him into the freedom of knowledge."

Kerrigan's mechandrites whipped down and held Abbas' arms and legs in place as she pulled a sterile knife out from her satchel. Dr. Franklin shouted in horror nearly as loud as her apprentice as she cut into Abbas' spine without any anesthesia. The young Sáclair thrashed about in pain, cleansing himself of any pretense.

She asked him in the High Gothic of the Damascan nobility, "Do you wish to be a priest of the Omnissah?"

"Magos, what are you doing?" Abbas sobbed in pain and confusion.

She twisted the knife in his back. "Do you still wish to be a priest of the Omnissiah?"

"Yes!" Abbas screamed. The doctor tried to shove himself between Abbas and Kerrigan but she tossed him to the side of the room with her mechandrites.

"Do you still wish to be a priest, knowing the pain that it will bring, the suffering that you will face to earn knowledge?" Kerrigan said impassively as she sliced into his back, exposing the ribs and shoving the meat aside with her fingers.

"YES!" Abbas howled in agony. Orr, who understood as little Damascan High Gothic as Dr. Franklin did, was cowering in the corner, his prayers to the machine long forgotten. He made the symbol of the Aquilla and whispered words of warding. She would have to remember to punish him for that.

"Why?" Kerrigan scraped back the meat from his spine and started to drill into the bones, taking care not to nick the nerves. It wasn't especially easy to do with Abbas convulsing in agony and trying to attack her with a stool. The Alliance medicus was nothing if not persistent.

"BECAUSE I'M A BASTARD," Abbas screamed, "AND I HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO GO! I CAN'T GO BACK TO BEING NOTHING!"

"Good answer," Kerrigan replied in English as she pulled the augmenter interface out from her bag and lined its spikes up to the holes that she'd drilled in Abbas' spine, "Try not to pass out."

She shoved down hard, driving the spikes into the nerve clusters on Abbas' spine. The boy screamed so loud that his voice seemed to whittle down to faint wisps of agony, but he did not pass out. Kerrigan sprayed a healing foam into the wound and pulled the flesh shut around the three protruding sockets. She held the skin in place for a count of ten, allowing the foam to form a suture, then released it and rounded on the stool-brandishing doctor as he tried to shove his way past Bizack.

"Orr, leave."

Her other apprentice did not have to be told twice. He bolted out the door and ran to Omissah alone knew where. She would track him down later. "Medicus Franklin, what in the name of all that is good and holy do you think you are doing? I could have paralyzed the boy if something went even slightly wrong."

"Me? What am I doing?" The doctor waved at the still sobbing child in horror, "You just flayed a twelve year old!"

"It was a necessary ritual. I had to test his conviction." Kerrigan asserted, "Pain is an important part of it."

"Test his conviction? The kid hasn't hit puberty yet." The Doctor virtually seethed with anger, "I've had about it up to here with you claiming cruelty as a cultural maxim. You can latch onto your tradition and your religion as much as you want, but for someone to do what I just saw you do to someone who loves and trusts you as much as that boy does, you have to have something just downright rotten inside of you."

"It is necessary," Kerrigan asserted, suppressing the feelings of unnecessary guilt that the Medicus somehow managed to elicit from her. It was a tradition that dated back to the fall of the mankind to the Iron Men. The doctor could not help but have such a limited perspective on the workings of the Adeptus Mechanicus; he did not understand the true way of things. "The ritual serves a purpose. It allows us to weed out those too feeble or weak-minded to undergo the transition."

"Weed out the weak?" Dr. Franklin gagged at the thought of it. "Jesus. what would you have done if he didn't answer the question right?"

"I am in need of new servitors," Kerrigan replied noncommittally, "The process would have taken longer, and Orr would have needed to get some more specific augmentics from my transport, but I could easily have converted him to a combat servitor of some sort."

"Get out of my med bay Magos," said the Doctor in a smoldering whisper of abject hatred, "Get out of my med bay now."

Trusting in the Alliance medicus' skills to nurse Abbas back to wellness, Kerrigan acquiesced, spinning about and walking to the door. "When he wakes up, tell him to meet me in my quarters so that I can fit him for mechandrites."

Bizack grumbled as they walked about how the Magos ought to let him go back and give that upstart medicus a good thrashing for his cheek, but she was only half listening. She thought back to her own initiation and tried to remember how she'd felt at the time. Time had long since dulled the centuries-old memory, but a vague impression remained of a small girl lying on a stone table in incomprehension as a woman she'd loved like a mother cut off the tips of her fingers and treated her as a stranger.

It was perhaps best that she had not preserved that memory engram. Some things were best forgotten, no matter how necessary they were at the time.

* * *

Michael swore furiously at the sight of yet another Psi-corps patrol weaving their way through the tourists front of the transport authority, reflected in the small mirror he was using to peek around corners. He'd been doing his best to take uncommon paths and disused routes to avoid the Psi-corps, but ultimately there were a limited number of places from which one could leave the planet Mars without raising suspicion or extradition. The Psi-corps had limited him from the majority of them.

He hadn't put much thought into an escape strategy from Mars in his initial plans. Susan's apparent arrest had been illegal; he would only have needed to get as far as the nearest Earthforce base before he could secure safe passage back to Babylon 5. He had backup plans, of course, but all of them were intended for one or two, not three. It wouldn't do them any good to steal a shuttle if they asphyxiated prior to reaching safe harbor in Narn space where they couldn't be extradited for ship-theft. His plans could be modified, but only to a point.

Contacting the "Free Mars" group for passage was an option, but he doubted that they would work with him knowing that he had a Dilgar in tow. The first time she made a catty comment about inferior races, someone would put a PPG round in her head, for entirely legitimate reasons. Warmaster Nya'dun lacked the infamy of the higher ranking Dilgar war criminals, but she had a list of crimes to her name to curdle the blood. The woman was evil, unrepentant and unashamed of it.

"How the hell do you get yourself into these situations, Garibaldi," Michael whispered to himself. "You should have stayed home, watched the game, maybe played some poker, but noooo- you had to travel halfway across the galaxy to save two scumbags."

"We can hear you Mr. Garibaldi," hissed the warmaster in irritation, "Speaking softly doesn't make the sound travel any less directly into my ears."

"I'd suggest not interrupting Officer Garibaldi's self-recriminating monologues. Although irritating, they seem to aid his thinking process," droned Mr. Bester as he adjusted the black gloves on his hands, "And he has been seriously considering shooting both of us for several days now."

"Stay out of my head, Bester," growled Michael, irritated.

"Don't flatter yourself, Mr. Garibaldi, there is no need for telepathy to read you. You've been toying with the butt of your pistol since we first escaped the Martian research outpost." He smiled innocently. "If you hadn't been thinking about it, I would seriously fear for my own safety. The alternative is that I would be following a madman."

"So you are permitted to be abrupt with the Garibaldi, but not me?" The Warmaster crossed her arms irritatedly, hissing slightly on each final syllable.

The telepath rolled his eyes and replied, "Of course I am. He won't shoot me until I've given him the proof he needs of Clark's guilt. You, dear Warmaster, have remained entirely coy about what information you have."

"My information is not for sale until I reach the custody of the Non-Aligned Worlds." The Warmaster hissed, whiskers aquiver, "It is-"

"About the surviving Dilgar military disposition, yes you've said a thousand times already." Garibaldi sighed in exasperation, "We've been on the run for weeks now, so could you at least change things up every once and a while?"

"I previously tried being forthright with the Earth Alliance on the subject. Their accommodations were insufficient for my needs." The Warmaster absently reached up to a long pink mass of scars reaching from her eyebrow up and around her notched ear. The woman's eyes unfocused for a moment as she regressed to memory, shivering. "And I hesitate to provide information until I am certain that I won't... return..."

Mr. Bester hugged the Warmaster, stroking the fur behind her ears and cooing softly, "You're safe, kitten. We're safe, it's over and you do not have to return. Focus on the cold of the air and the softness of your coat. This is not an illusion; illusions miss minor irritations and intricacies." Garibaldi forced himself to stop gaping at the sight of Bester, of all people, showing kindness to anyone.

He pinched her cheek, hard. The Dilgar meowled in irritation and punched Mr. Bester in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. He wheezed loudly, resting his arms on his knees as he turned to face Michael and said, "It was common practice for the interrogators to present us with fantasies of escape so that we would reveal information about ourselves. They would spend days, even weeks, letting us believe that we'd escaped and found safety before bringing us back to reality and proving just how trapped we were."

"You think that I'm a fantasy of escape?" Michael groaned in irritation, "You think none of this is real."

"Me? Most certainly not; I refuse to believe that any of my former subordinates are cruel enough to envision an escape fantasy where I have to endure your hour-long irritated conversations with yourself as you listen to Martian league baseball on your interlink as we sneak through the Martian sewerage system." Bester looked pityingly at the Dilgar as she pulled her cowl up over her ears and cloak tighter over her uniform, "She, however, has been a test subject for new interrogation techniques for close to a decade - and my presence does not ameliorate her fears."

"You interrogated her." Michael groaned, "That's why you knew what she knows."

"Only in vague terms." The Dilgar smiled, flashing a mouth of sharp fangs, "Ten years and they never broke me. Pitiful."

"You proved a most interesting puzzle," Mr. Bester agreed in a tone of gentle competition, as though chatting with an old rival at a sporting event, "I had to reconsider a number of previously presumed constants of telepathic interrogations. But no, during my tenure we relied purely upon mental rather than physical implements. I have no need of such crutches."

"And you trust him why, precisely?" Michael sighed.

"Dear man, do you believe that there is another person who can pretend to be as smug as Bester genuinely is for any length of time? Since they took him prisoner he's been delighting in throwing a spanner into their attempts to interrogate me," She shrugged. "If this is a fantasy, it's proved amusing enough to warrant indulging in it before the electrified pain spikes come back. I'm in no hurry to revisit those."

Bester growled in professional irritation, "Brutish amateurs. Information gained by such primitive means is hardly worth the effort."

"I'm surrounded by crazy people," Michael sighed and looked back to his mirror. The Psi-corps officers had rounded the bend, heading for the southern entrance, "OK people, look alive. We're heading for the Minbari port authority. If we can make it in there, we can claim amnesty."

It was an odd byproduct of the Minbari surrender at the battle of the line. Minbari ships had not been allowed to land in Earth Alliance territory as part of the terms of their surrender, but there was a massive fleet in orbit of earth that needed to restock its supply of quantum-40. In an odd bit of legal maneuvering, the Earth Alliance government had declared a disused landing pad and supply yard on Mars to be Minbari diplomatic territory, so that shuttles of q-40 could be loaded without breaking the terms of the tenuous Minbari surrender. So it was that twelve square blocks of Martian territory in the largest of the dome cities was, in fact, part of Minbar.

It had become something of a tourist attraction in the following years. Initially, it was a safe place to get a look at the dreaded Minbari scourge, then later because of the ease with which one could both trade with Minbari travelers and purchase alien wares. The primarily European residents of the "Minbari-Earth border" tended to view themselves as more cosmopolitan than their other Martian brethren for living cheek-to-jowl with the aliens.

"Yes, we enter Minbari land - where we claim we engineered our own escape and ran into you while you were on vacation, and that you aided us out of the goodness of your own heart," Bester replied in boredom. "It astonishes me that these harebrained schemes of yours somehow function."

"What can I say? Spend enough years as an alcoholic and you get pretty good at making excuses," Michael shrugged.

"Why does that not overburden me with confidence?" replied the Warmaster.

"You want to stay behind? Be my guest." Michael held up his hand, counting down on his fingers, "But we are about – to – go!"

On 'go' he sprinted across the plaza, heading for the front gate of the Minbari transit authority, trusting that the sound of swift footsteps behind him were those of his fellow fugitives. Stepping off a knee-high wall he leapt three feet and onto the tabletop outside a French café. A startled couple yelled in surprise as he ran across their breakfast and onto the next table, leapfrogging his way across the bistro.

A broad-shouldered man rose to his feet with a yell of, "Oye! The fu-" only to be knocked forward into his eggs and toast by a sharp strike to the kidney as the Warmaster shoved him out of her way, growling ferociously. The howling of a large cat rose some primal fear in the humans, prompting them to leap out of the path of the Dilgar. Bester, as was his habit, jogged casually behind the frenzied feline with an expression of mild interest as he eyed the various breakfasts.

Slipping slightly from the egg on his shoe as he hit the ground, Michael narrowly avoided death as a PPG shot seared its way past his face, the sound of their bid for freedom apparently having alerted the Psi-corps patrol to their presence. Ten black-uniformed men charged through the crowd of tourists, firing their PPGs into the air to scare the civilians out of their line of fire.

Michael dived into a crouch, hiding behind a marble fountain shaped in the form of a prancing horse. Steam rose in great clouds as plasma fire shot through the streams of water coming from the horse's nostrils, providing Nya'dun with nominal cover as she followed Michael to his hiding place. As the Warmaster rose her pistol to fire back Michael grabbed her by the wrist, "No, you might hit civilians."

"Better them than us!" Bester screamed across the path from where he was crouching behind a, now scorched, palm tree. He flinched as a bowling ball sized coconut crashed to the ground between his legs, "Jesus."

"We need to get move!" Michael shouted over the sounds of PPG fire and screaming, "If we let them pin us down here we're as good as dead!"

"There is no cover at all over there! We'd be giving ourselves to them on a platter." The Warmaster growled irritatedly, "That's no solution at all."

"Must I be the only one who can think in a crisis?" Bester growled in irritation, picking up the coconut and heaving it across the plaza and into the front gate, ducking into a roll and taking cover with the two other fugitives as his projectile flew through the air. It soared five yards before smashing the window of the guardhouse.

"Well that was wholly unnecessary," sighed the Warmaster, exasperated, "Shall we yell insults next?"

"No," Michael smiled, catching onto Bester's line of thinking, "Next we surrender."

"What!" the Dilgar hissed, fur standing on edge as though she'd just received an electric shock, "Are you completely mental?!"

"Good thinking Mr. Garibaldi, that will expedite our escape considerably," nodded Bester, "ten feet should do it I think?"

"Better make it twenty to be sure," Michael agreed, looking at his watch. "They've had enough time by now and I want to make it look good."

Michael held up his pistol, tossing it over the fountain and into the plaza. It scattered six yards across the tiled ground. Bester, following Michael's lead, did the same. The telepath then held his fingers to his temple in a gesture of concentration, wincing slightly as he sent a message of surrender across the plaza.

"This had better be another hallucination," griped the Dilgar as she tossed hers as well, "Humans cannot possibly be this crazy."

"They've accepted our surrender," Bester opened one eye and looked at Michael in surprise, "And yours, though I'd thought they'd rather shoot you on principle."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Michael griped as he stood up and walked out from where he hid, taking care to keep his palms behind his head, taking care to stay on the left side of the horse with his back to the Minbari Transit Authority.

"That's far enough," barked the senior Psi-corps officer in an Scottish brogue as he motioned for his subordinates to approach the fugitives. "You're nicked."

Michael did not resist as two large men forced him into a crouch, tying his arms at the wrists with plastic ties, though he did protest in irritation as one of them roughly groped his body searching for hidden weapons, "Oye, buy me dinner first buddy."

The Psi-cop kneed him in the gut for his cheek. Garibaldi huffed in discomfort and fell to his knees, huffing for air as he watched the Dilgar struggle against her captors, hissing and biting at them, "You won't take me without a fight, you useless genetic wastrels! I'll gut you and feast on your entrails."

"A charming woman," the senior officer eyed Bester contemptuously from where two officers twisted the telepath's arms in a painful submission hold, "I can tell what you see in her."

He turned back to the cowering crowd of tourists, cupped his hands, and yelled, "Nothing to see here folks, I'm sorry for interrupting your day with this little bit of law enforcement unpleasantry. It's over now."

"I wouldn't precisely say that," replied a jovial voice from the direction of the Minbari transit authority, "I suspect there are a few matters still up in the air."

A handsome long-haired man with just a shock of a beard and mustache walked towards the Psi-cops, his Minbari uniform clashing with his obviously human features. Two highly irked members of the Minbari warrior caste followed him closely as he strode forwards, spinning the rounded shape of a coconut on his fingertips like a basketball.

Humming cheerily as he near skipped his way over to the senior Psi-cop, he extended his unoccupied hand to the officer, "Liaison on behalf of the Earth-Minbari Co-operation Bureau. Pleased to meet you."

The officer did not accept the man's outstretched hand, eyeing it distastefully as he said, "Never heard of it. Now if you'll get you of my way, I can take these fugitives into custody."

"Yes," sighed the man wistfully as he tossed the coconut over into the Psi-cops' hands, "You see, I'm afraid there is a problem with that. These three committed an act of vandalism against a building in Minbari territory, so they're going to have to explain themselves to the Minbari magistrate."

"These people are wanted for treason, jail-breaking, and attempted murder," growled the Psi-cop.

"Not on Minbar, I'm afraid," the man shrugged, "That strikes me as a problem for Earth Alliance territory."

"We _are _in Earth Alliance territory." the officer said tersely.

"No," replied one of the stone-faced Minbari, "The border of the Transit Authority is surrounded by five yards of unclaimed territory to prevent tariff disputes. You are currently in a demilitarized zone."

"This is absurd," the officer shook his head in incredulity, "I'm taking them with me. Want to stop me? You're going to have to shoot your way through us."

"Well, you do have so many more guns than us," The man admitted, looking conspiratorially to the two Minbari before snapping his fingers. With a roar of sudden shifting air, the oblong bluish forms of two Nial fighters flew up from behind the high walls of the Minbari compound, each of them rotating heavy fission cannons towards the Psi-corps officers, "But ours are just so much bigger than yours."

"This isn't legal!" howled the Psi-cop in fear, "You can't do this!"

"Oh, it would likely cause a diplomatic incident if we do, sir," the man said agreeably, "Heck, we'd probably have to give up this outpost entirely. And Lernon would just be heartbroken about that. Wouldn't you, Lernon?"

The warrior caste soldier just grunted. The man patted him on the shoulder and sighed, "You'll have to pardon Lernon; he never entirely got over not being able to finish the Battle of the Line. But I suppose you're about to give him his chance, aren't you?"

It was the look of contempt on the Minbari's face that seemed to convince the Psi-cop to back off, even more so than the fission cannons of the fighters. He snarled in frustration and made a rude gesture towards the man with his hand, "This isn't over."

"You may report any issues you have with us to the Minbari ambassador on Babylon 5. I'm sure she'll just love to have you explain why you started a firefight in front of a diplomatic residence," The man ran his thumb up his own forehead, tipping an invisible hat, "Best of luck to you."

The Minbari led the three fugitives safely behind the walls of the Minbari Transit Authority before the front gates shut with a resounding iron clang, hiding the spiteful face of the officer from view. With a slight chuckle the man let out a long, low whistle of relief, "I can't believe that worked."

"What!" squawked the Dilgar as he cut her wrists loose.

"There isn't any no man's land," Michael replied, "He was lying."

"Then what was your plan?" she crooned.

"I was trying to get the Minbari to ask for a list of charges, as is Minbari custom, and under Earth Alliance law they must produce to anyone who asks. Either he'd have to fake the charges, which we could dispute, or he'd have to admit them, which would reveal an illegal torture facility," Bester shrugged, "But this was vastly more preferable. Why precisely did you do it?"

"I'm under orders to help him," he pointed to Michael, "Get back to Babylon 5 and get things back the way 'they are meant to be.' Or something to that effect; my orders tend to be rather cryptic and esoteric."

"Ordered by whom precisely?" probed Bester.

"He had a message for you specifically, Michael," The man pursed his lips in thought, "Ah, yes! 'A black ship and a scorched badge makes long friends."

Michael laughed, relaxing as the man cut the bonds off his wrists. The security chief knew very well very well where that message came from, and what it meant. Jeffrey Sinclair, the former commander of Babylon 5 and current Human Ambassador to Minbar, had been with him when the two of them had discovered a secret Psi-corps research outpost working on some unknown alien ship. The only evidence they'd been able to walk away with was a scorched Psi-corps logo. The knowledge of both ship and badge were exclusively known to the two of them. "How did he know?"

"That you were here? He didn't," The man smiled, "But we tracked your flight plan."

"How in the- It wasn't even under my I.D! I hopped ten different transports under different names. Heck, I went into Narn and Centauri space before coming to Mars," Michael sputtered.

"Our mutual friend suggested some of your favored aliases," The man shrugged, "It wasn't hard to find once I knew what to look for. And I have a - er - range of associates in various places." The man glared spitefully at Michaels companions. "I hope you'll pardon me for not going more into detail considering our company."

"Yes, yes, we already know you don't like us," the Dilgar eyed the Minbari speculatively, as though considering the ways to overpower them. "Can we please get to the part where you threaten us, then take us on that delightful-looking diplomatic ship being gassed up even as we speak? I'd like to be off-world before the Psi-corps think to fool the Air Traffic Authority into shooting us down prior to reaching the jump gate, thinking we're some sort of flying bat-creature opening the gates of hell."

"Yes... that would be unfortunate," the man agreed, "Very well, children, everybody grab their buddy and let's get started on our field trip to Babylon 5. My name is Marcus, and I will be your guide for the duration."

* * *

The Lady Sáclair luxuriated on a gilded throne as it hovered through the air, strumming her fingers across her chest. Her belly, great with child, swaddled snugly into an augmentic corset that aided in supporting the additional heft of her soon to be born son. The great golden face of a roaring lion heaved and fell with her calm, slow breathing. The child was more placid than she was used to, but the Medicus assured her that it was to be expected given the higher-gravity environment of the newly colonized moon. It would take time for the unborn Lord Sáclair's muscles to adjust to the additional strain.

Annabelle's own aches and pains had increased since landing upon the planet, the dull and expected pains of motherhood exacerbated by the near-perpetual exhaustion of moving in slow motion. Throne bless Magos Tuul, who'd had the good sense to send the anti-gravity chair in addition to the household items she'd insisted upon bringing down from the _Endless Bounty_. It would rather have ruined the image of regal poise that she labored to maintain for the good of her subjects. A subject respected a leader who gave just cause for deference.

And there was great need for deference in dealing with the new task of bringing civilization to the untamed Terra Firma of the twin moons of Vega Six, dubbed New Belzafest and the Lion's Perch respectively. New Belzafest was a verdant moon, as different from its namesake as one could imagine. The Lion's Perch was substantially smaller, if no less verdant, and housed a long since disused spaceport as well as an orbiting station for refueling starships within spitting distance of the massive xenotech-constructed hyperspace-gate.

It had been years since the Lady Sáclair had left her husband's side, but in light of the danger he faced, Nathaniel had been adamant that she took the children to New Belzafest to aid and support the in the foundation of their new colony. It pained her to do so, but she had consented for the good of her children. With the notable exception of David, they would all be safely away from conflict. It hadn't escaped her notice that there were scrupulously few men of fighting age who'd been assigned to the recolonization effort, and suspiciously many new mothers, children, and teachers.

With the exception of her own private guard of Lionhearts and a decent number of Adeptus Arbites, the fledgling world's military assets consisted of a skeleton regiment of aging soldiers and injured Guardsmen. They manned the garrison, who spent as much time napping in the warm sunlight as they did patrolling the perimeter for dangerous beasts. And though a number of outdated, unshielded, and Warp-incapable ships were left for the defense of New Belzafest, Annabelle feared that they would be woefully unprepared for any sort of attacks. About her only seasoned force short of her own personal guard was a regiment of one hundred well-meaning but ill-mannered Ogryn.

But that would change when the _Endless Bounty_ returned. Not . And the colony would be prepared to start a new pocket of glorious Empire in Terra's name. It had been a month since she'd last seen hide or hair of her husband, but she would soon. She sighed and cracked her neck, wet pops clicking as she massaged the stiffness out. "I suppose that's enough quiet for one day."

"If you say so, Ma'am,'" replied Corporal Maziv in his low purring grumble, his milky white augmentic eyes glowing slightly in the dull evening light. He was so old that even augmentics and anti-agapics could only slow the rate of physical decay, rather than stop it. Nobody knew exactly how old he was, since Maziv never bothered to keep track, but he was old enough to have served Sáclair's grandfather some two hundred years before. His reflexes and loyalty hadn't wavered in all that time. "The Circle will likely have started by now."

"Yes," Anabelle pursed her lips and flipped the activator to her chair, "I suspect they have."

The Belzafesters were entirely polite and respectful, but no less infuriating to deal with. The former Belzafest colony had no nobles. The governorship of the colony was appointed by a representative of the Inquisition when the position became vacant, but all other positions in government were elected ones. Consequently, while they did respect her as the _de facto _governess of the new colonies, they had some strange notions about how one ought to treat their sovereign, not the least of which was that they expected to make policy absent their governess.

Maziv grunted, "They mean well, ma'am, they just think different."

"Careful Maziv, you'll be telling the Lionheart recruits that they've done a good job next," Annabelle jested. Maziv would no more give compliments than grow wings and fly.

"I Throne well won't. Give them a compliment and they go and get themselves dead in some foolishness," Maziv nodded firmly, "Better disappointed at their scores than dead on the battlefield."

"How are the young Lionhearts?" For their safety, all Lionhearts too young for active combat had been reassigned to New Belzafest, much to their annoyance.

"They complained at first; young men are always eager to throw themselves into the jaws of battle and death. Fools, the lot of them are. But Fadir and some of the boys who were unable to continue active duty after Belzafest have been taking them through stealth exercises in the woods, which seems to have taken their mind off of it," Maziv sighed, "It's the little ones who worry me. The boys younger than ten are terrified of the jungle noises. Some damned fool showed them a copy of a Catachan holo-vid and they've become convinced a Catachan Devil is going to eat them in the night."

"Yes," Annabelle sighed, "The Consort Aran was lamenting something similar, though I find it difficult to take anything Isabel says without a grain of salt."

Annabelle found dealing with the consort wives of her husband to be exhausting. Her husband rarely consulted her on the decision to take a new concubine, if ever, and even then it was only a matter of her own aesthetic preferences. He wanted to pick women who she found sufficiently attractive to share her bed with.

To be sure, at times it worked out splendidly. Sáclair's first concubine, Ariana Rendra, had been a pleasure both inside and out of the bedroom. They'd lived as equals until an unfortunate side effect of giving birth to Anthony, Nathaniel's second bastard child, had killed her. It was perhaps why the boy had grown up to be so taciturn later in life.

Annabelle had not had as pleasant a relationship with any of the subsequent consorts. Regina Kora, though pleasant enough, was a bore and a dullard. She was a great listener to be sure, but Annabelle resented the woman's supposition that Regina's offspring would take the place of her own were she unable to mother an heir.

The Lady Sandra Nixya had not been a consort as such, as she was Captain of the _Crossed Cutlasses_. She'd left the product of her affair in artificial wombs to come to term prior to leaving for the northern rim of space. For the children's sake, she'd forced Nathaniel to declare the woman an official concubine. He'd never been able to abide the sight of them, so hurt was he by the Lady Nyxia's dismissal of him. Annabelle, however, had loved them as her own. It had been with great sadness that she'd consented to send them to the Schola Progenitum, but they had neither skill nor titles and would need both to thrive in life.

Kifah Narjis was well intentioned but irritating. Kifa had no particularly irritating habits, but as a woman barely two years older than Ami she'd seduced the lord Sáclair while working as his chamber maid. The sheer cheek of it was infuriating.

And the less said about the Isabel Aran and the better. Isabel Aran's only notable merits were her unusual sexual appetite and a body born of constant, narcissistic levels of fitness. It was the damned Inquisitor's fault. It had been in the stress of fleeing his pursuit that Nathaniel had taken Isabel to his bed, and then in his incarceration that they'd been trapped together.

She loved her husband dearly, and tolerated them for his sake, but there was a part of her that questioned the necessity of the concubines at all. It was his right by birth and conquest to do so, but what a man could do and what he ought to do were seldom the same. If he'd focused on her and only her, perhaps they'd even have a boy by now. No, the here and now, stick to the here and now.

For family and duty she stuck to what mattered.

Annabelle leaned back into the cushion of her chair, the soft velvet cool against her aching back as the golden throne hovered over the red tile floor. "Come on Maziv. I've dawdled long enough."

Warm sunlight shone in through the wide windows favored by Centauri architects, encouraging rebellious flowering vines to shimmy into the dwelling. Neither the Belzafesters nor the _Endless Bounty_ crewmen were particularly skilled in the art of horticulture, and the process of clearing the thick mess of encroaching wilderness had slunk along in a ponderous crawl of confusion, accidents, and delays. It was a minor miracle that any of the dwellings were fit for habitation at all, having been abandoned for decades. Yet whatever else might be said of the Centauri, they build their structures to last.

The short journey was pleasant, if nothing else. The Lionhearts and ship's security eagerly saluted the Lady as the throne passed them, even if there was a slight sheen of boredom in their eyes. For a wild and untamed planet, their stay had been decidedly unremarkable so far. Even the local fauna had, as of yet, not caused any problems to speak of other than causing some unfortunate allergic issues for the Narn Embassy. And that was hardly world-shattering.

It was during this rather soporific musing that the chair swooped round a corner, colliding with a resounding thud of flesh as a bemused nobleman squawked in bafflement. Hiding her smile of contented surprise she snorted imperiously at the upended man. "Good morning Lord Sørian."

"Milady," the oily weasel of a man smiled up at her, "A good morning indeed. I was just examining the most interesting flower."

"Ah," Annabelle replied noncommittally, deigning to commit as little importance to the man's opinions as she could. Annabelle hated Sørian. The man was lecherous, self indulgent, self important, and simperingly saccharine in his supplication. Her good husband, in a mood that smacked more of liquor than brilliance, had come to the decision that Sørian ought to be appointed to the Belzafest colony as an advisor. Though what advice he expected the irritating man to give was entirely beyond her.

The man continued to smile vapidly as the silence dragged on, smiling expectantly at her. Exasperated, she asked, "What is so interesting about the flower?"

The nobleman held up a small white bud between his thumb and forefinger, still attached to the vine. The petals shifted as he touched them, straining towards the sunlight no matter where he turned the stem, "Most curious, are they not?"

"Living things aspire to keep on living, Sørian. Even plants are very skilled at adapting to that end," She rubbed her own belly, "We do everything to keep on living so that we can pass on our genes to the next generation."

"Do we?" Sørian picked the bud off the stem and tossed it into the darkness. The tiny bud fluttered about in the shade before pinwheeling about as though drawn by a magnet, rocketing over to another vine, "Because to be frank, milady, it rather seems like we've been allowing bendies to roam free among the groxes."

"You tread on dangerous ground," Annabelle's harsh alto snapped with such severity that all Lionhearts within earshot started eyeing Sørian with anticipative apprehension. Maziv's milky eyes narrowed as his hand casually rested upon the pommel of a curved scimitar.

Sørian was either too determined or too foolish to allow her warning to dissuade him from continuing, "Madam, the Amon Sui have been quiet as of late, but they are not gone. Now, more than ever, we need to be prepared for their treachery."

"You surprise me," Annabelle relaxed in her seat, "I'd rather been led to believe your loyalties lay elsewhere."

"The Amon Sui have no love for me, milady," The nobleman tipped his felt hat with a slight jingle of bells sewn into the seams of his waistcoat, "And I am ill-suited for subterfuge and sabotage. But I know people. I know their minds and their desires. And I intend to find them. For the good of the crew, for those who have... who have become special to me."

Ami, ugh, she had been fearing this. Her daughter had developed an unhealthy level of dependence upon the man's council. How Ami had even meet the wastrel was a mystery, but she would not see her daughter wed to someone so entirely unsuitable for her. Sørian was a man of proper breeding but a small heart.

Her husband had given approval? Bah, he was no mother. Ami deserved a man who would love her properly.

"Out of the goodness of your heart?" Annabelle chuckled derisively. Sørian had never been known to give a single copper penny at the collection plate. "I seem to recall a moment where a young nobleman had said 'If the Emperor planned on us wasting time and energy on every damned persons' problems, he would have made us all Primarchs or nobles."

"A youthful foolishness," Sørian splayed his right hand over his breast. "One that I regret terribly.I assure you milady, that I am long past youthful foolishness."

"No, Sørian, you've more than contented yourself with infections of the adult persuasion." Annabelle rolled her eyes at the man's rejected look of spite. Yes, therein lay the true man. "Sørian, like most women I do keep track of the ship's gossip. Unlike most women, I have unfettered access to the ships records. A curious number of women in your service seem to leave the _Endless Bount_y under mysterious circumstances when the ship makes port."

"I have no idea to what you refer, madame..." The nobleman hedged, "I do not keep track of every servant in my household."

"Oh, don't lie to me. It is a waste of both our time. Your purpose is no secret to me. I know your mind too well, my husband was cut off too similar a cloth," the lioness within her reared angrily, "Bastard children sired from servant girls and pretty faces are the byproduct of many a nobleman's sporting. But I will not abide a man romancing my daughter who would so discard a woman bearing his seed."

"You wound me, madame! I have no clue to what you refer. If there were any servants to be replaced, it would be my varlet, who organizes such mundane household affairs." Søians face was a mask of practiced innocence, betraying none of the anger she knew to be simmering just beneath the surface. "I have no carnal knowledge of any woman in my employ. The satisfaction of such urges is unthinkable to me."

"There wasn't likely much thinking involved, I suspect. " The Lady Sáclair was being far more blunt than was her custom, but in the fullness of her womanhood her pregnancy had drained her patience for the game of houses. Tired, achy, and hormonal as she was, there seemed little time to be wasted on roundabout speech. "Fortunately for you, I have no intention of relying upon your unique ability to 'not think' your way into her small-clothes. Contrary to what you may believe, servants are more than capable of both listening and speaking their minds. The servants in my employ do so more than most, I suspect. Your attempts to ingratiate yourself with a woman thirty years your junior have not been a subtle as you desire. She may find your company agreeable, but I find it wholly inappropriate."

"Madam, I do not pretend to know what sort of gossip you might know of me. Nor do I claim to be a saint. But whatever poison has been poured into your ear is, I assure you, entirely a misunderstanding." The nobleman bowed deeply and handed over one of the white flowers to her, "I can only say that envy and trickery have never been beyond the nobility. We sometimes forget to observe what is right in front of us for fear of some dark plot. I am her friend, nothing more. If I have overstepped my bonds, please accept my most humble of apologies."

Never for lack of courtesy, the Lady Sinclair politely sniffed the bud. Throne, but it was intoxicating, a vague smell of lavender and cooking pies. She couldn't precisely place it, but it was possibly the most lovely thing she'd ever smelled. She lost her train of thought as she stared into the bud. "These are magnificent. We'll have to make sure to plant these in the garden."

"They already are planted in the garden," Maziv grumbled informatively, "You ordered them burned."

"Did I?" Annabelle sniffed the flower again, feeling the aches and discomforts of her pregnancy melting away. "That seems a shame, they really are lovely. Such a wonderful scent..."

"Madam," The nobleman got down on his knees and pulled his wide hat from his head, displaying the many jeweled combs holding a powdered whig of finest grox-mane in place, "I only seek to advise and to aid you in your search for the traitors to our livelihood. They are no friends of my family, and I fear us all. I am at your disposal, and in your service."

"Yes, I suppose... I suppose that could be arranged," She sighed and reclined back into her chair. It was getting harder to concentrate. A bout of fatigue? Odd, she did not usually tire until her afternoon tea, "Maziv, I grow weary. Let us retire."

"Before seeing the Circle madam?" Maziv grunted.

"No, no of course not. I just... Of course, let us head to the Circle," Annabelle pinched her nose hard and let go of the flower, starting her addled senses back to waking, "I cannot wait till I can finally drink a decent cup of recaf. Ah, very well Lord Sørian. If you wish to hunt Amon Sui, then hunt them you shall."

Her mouth twitched into a devious smile as a solution to the Ami problem came to mind, "In fact that shall be your only job from henceforth. I am appointing six Lionhearts to follow you day and night to aid in your search. Till the Amon Sui are no longer a threat you shall not be without them, day or night until even the name Amon Sui is forgotten."

"Certainly that's excessive! A man must have some privacy after all. My apartments are secure enough," The man hastily replied, doubtlessly thinking of some comely maid in his employ. Perhaps he even had someone higher-born in mind; now that she'd thought of it, the Lady Huin had been sending jealous looks towards Ami whenever she'd gotten attention from the Lord Sørian.

"If you insist," Annabelle replied in a voice of motherly concern. She didn't especially need the Lionhearts with him when he was within the confines of his bedroom, only around to shield Ami from the advances of an older man. Sørian was highly unlikely to unearth anything of importance in his search anyway.

Sørian looked slightly green as six Lionhearts materialized from behind tapestry and next to cupboards, falling into lockstep with him, "Are they to obey me?"

"Only if you're not acting the prat and giving good advice," Maziv grunted with his diplomatic air, "Noble you are, Sáclair you aren't. You're a guildsman, nay a shipman."

Sørian's eyes narrowed, "I did not ask you, lowborn. I asked your mistress."

"Maziv, if he speaks without a civil tongue in his head again, please remove it," Annabelle enjoyed the look of shock in Sørian's eyes as she said, "Oh, honestly. Even were he to do it, the Medicus can grow you a new one in a matter of hours. It would be painful, but certainly deserved for being so rude to my subjects. You're a noble, do try and act like it."

"I will keep your advice in mind milady," the nobleman bowed, "Now if you will excuse me, I have to oversee the transfer of property into my new household."

The Lady Sáclair nodded curtly, to which Sørian rushed out of the corridor. His six shadows followed him in lockstep, much to the nobleman's irritation.

"Come on, Maziv," She sighed, "The Circle will arrange the terms of diplomatic relations with the Narn without us if we don't hurry. No sense of decorum, I swear."

"Yes mam," replied the Lionheart dutifully, "If you say so ma'am."

* * *

Geneva is beautiful in spring. John had been to the capital city of Earth before, but never during spring. In spite of their newfound importance where the Earth government had been founded, the Swiss staunchly refused to allow any developments that might ruin the aesthetic beauty of their countryside. Barring, of course, the sizable space ports in Zurich and Geneva.

It was odd really, as Jon wasn't unaccustomed to either travel. As the son of a diplomat he'd grown up being carted around from place to place, always finding himself in foreign worlds. Yet for whatever reason, Geneva just hadn't really figured into his travel plans. When he'd finally been old enough to pay for his own vacations, it had felt simpler to head back home and visit family.

Oh hell, he'd forgotten to call his mother when he landed. He'd sent her an interlink message, of course, but she wouldn't stop being anxious till she spoke face to face on the comms. John couldn't wish for a better mother, but the woman was the queen of worriers.

He looked to his lawyer as she examined her legal briefings for what had to be the millionth time, asking "Is there a telephone in this car?"

"This is a government issue limousine, Captain, and no location devices of any kind are in use." She held up a handheld telephone and tapped the top left corner, where a prominent red "ø" flashed, "And they prevent any signals from leaving it as well. Its a new procedure they've put in place to prevent the remote detonation of bombs. The new Earth Force One has something similar."

"Will I be able to make a call before my hearing?" John really ought to call her.

"Captain we're lucky they didn't do the hearing in absentia," Miss Corey joked darkly, surreptitiously eyeing his uniform as though searching for the slightest flaw that might harm her case. Finding none, she pulled a small box from her handbag and tossed it to John.

He caught it and pulled a long yellow band of fabric out, "What's this?"

"I want you to wrap that around your left arm," She pointed to a series of symbols stitched on the cloth, "It's a 'remembrance band.' Some pop celebrity from Argentina came up with it. Those are the words for 'Hope' and 'Peace' written in Spanish, Drazi, Minbari, Centauri and Narn. Some of them also include it written in languages of the Non-Aligned worlds."

"And the double headed eagle is for the Imperials, then?" John queried, running the fabric through his fingers and examining the symbols. The Minbari rune was actually slightly misspelled by whoever had done the sewing, saying 'hope and luck' instead.

"It's become a hot button political issue. You have to wear the sash to show that you're supporting the families of the people who died on the station," The stern woman intoned in a voice of deadly seriousness. "If you don't wear it, people will take it as a sign that you don't take their losses seriously."

"I was there. I don't need to have a piece of cloth to remind me of something that happened directly to me." John sighed even as he tied it around his bicep.

"I know that. You know that. Heck, even the people who are trying to nail you for this know that. But the talking heads and media circuses that will be following this trial don't care about what makes sense. It's easier to go after you for not wearing the armband than it is to go after your military record. Hell, it's even better for being fake outrage, because they can spend as much time talking about why it's not an issue worth speaking about as they spend talking about the issue," She shrugged, "You can waste a bunch of time and energy on trying to fix the entire media structure, or you can wear the armband. Your choice."

"Yeah, right," John sighed as they pulled up to the capitol building. A sea of reporters, cameramen, and boom-microphone operators stood at the door in a veritable feeding frenzy. "Any last advice?"

"Yes," The woman replied as she lifted herself up and climbed from the limousine, "If you end up shooting one of them, aim for Alistair Brant. I cannot stand that man's voice."

The second he walked out of the limousine he was deluged with so many questions that it became hard to pick them out individually. An incoherent series of "Captain how..." "...what do you..." "...how did they..." and "What will be done about..." washed over him as he politely pushed his way through, repeating the same phrase over and over again, "No comment, no comment, I have no comment."

Resisting the urge to rip an overzealous boom-microphone from its bearer's hands and beat him about the head with it, John followed the be-pantsuited lawyer on her trail up the stairs and into the capitol building. The sea of reporters washed up to the red velvet rope marking off the limit to which a civilian might walk, as even the most single-minded of them was unwilling to try the patience of the stern faced marines lining the perimeter.

John noticed idly that all of the marines were wearing the yellow bands out of their pockets rather than on their arms so as not to violate the strict uniform expectations of their superior officer. Perhaps Miss Corey had been right about the band.

The ostentatious interior of Earthdome was abuzz with interns and Senators discussing matters of state in hushed tones. Judging by their silence when he was within earshot, they were likely discussing him. John tried not to pay it too much attention, as it was bound to happen really. It didn't matter if one was in middle school or the highest offices of government; gossip was a universal currency.

Miss Corey checked her watch and looked at the flashing red light above the Senate door to indicate that they were locked, "I didn't know that there was going to be a Senate vote this morning. They usually vote on Thursdays, don't they?"

"Not exclusively," John caught the eye of Senator Gomez, "But let's find out. Senator Gomez! It's been a while."

"_¿Qué tal, Capitan Sherídan?_" The boisterous Spaniard replied, politely breaking away from his conversation with a lobbyist, "How are you?"

"I could be better, Senator. The sooner this ends the better," John admitted. "I've never especially liked this sort of inquiry, even when I'm not the one being questioned."

"Eh, these things they're never- _cómo se dice-_ civilized. Sure we sit around speaking pretty but a knife in the back is still a knife in the back," The senator said with his usual candor, "Most of them will pretend, but I've got another three years before reelection, so I can afford a little bit of honesty at the moment."

"Why aren't you inside, Senator?" Miss Corey looked around at the collection of Senators that weren't within the room, "Shouldn't all the senators be voting in a closed vote?"

"For some things? Yes, of course. But some committees meet behind closed doors before bringing their findings to the general assembly. Defense, for example," the Spaniard tossed his hands to the air in an exaggerated gesture of confusion, "We do not communicate so well between the committees, I think."

"Which committee is meeting now?" John asked conversationally. Senator Gomez was on both the Defense Committee and the Babylon 5 Oversight Committee; any relevant vote to his own inquiry would be going through them.

"The Foreign Affairs Committee," the Senator replied, "The Abbai have sent a delegation to Earth with some sort of a proposal for greater cooperation. No idea what it is, but Clark was eager to see that it happened."

"Clark?" Miss Corey repeated in incredulity, "President Clark was eager to pass a proposal suggested by aliens for greater cooperation?"

"It was a good deal," Senator replied as he looked to the suddenly green light, "You'll have to excuse me. I need to go to my seat. Good luck, _Captain_. For what it's worth, I'm on your side."

"Thank you Senator," John smiled in reply, "It means a great deal."

"Well that's one down," John's lawyer crossed her arms and chewed her inner lip, "That leaves only a couple hundred to go."

"Eh," John replied noncommittally. Nothing more really needed to be said as they walked with the general mass of people through the ornately carved doors of the Senate. The huge tiered room was structured like an amphitheater, clustered tables and wooden cubicles on each level representing the regions of the Earth Sphere government.

The Abbai delegation bowed to him politely as they passed, pausing to exchange polite greetings. The Ambassador actually flashed him a wave of her head fins, an Abbai gesture of approbation, "Captain Sheridan. It is good to see you."

"Ambassador," John smiled and interlocked his fingers in front of him in the Abbai gesture of welcome, "I thought you'd gone back to your home world for the Festival of Lights."

"Lamentably, I will miss it this year. I regret it, but this was more important." She licked the sharp inner rows of teeth with her elongated tongue. Peaceful though the Abbai were, certain predatory aspects of their former life as aquatic predators could not be overlooked. "It is lamentable, but necessary."

"Ambassador, exactly what are you proposing that is this important?" John asked in genuine curiosity.

"Captain, my people have exactly one advantage over every other ship galaxy - shields. The Brakiri have some shielding, but when it comes to ship-to-ship combat, nobody comes close to us. It has been an advantage that has allowed us to hold our own even in the worst of times against the Dilgar," She sighed morosely, "But now with the Imperials, it becomes transparently obvious that this advantage can not be exclusively relied upon. The landscape of warfare has changed entirely Captain. My people must adapt or soon find themselves outstripped."

"You're here to trade for weapons?" It wasn't implausible. The Earth Alliance's offensive weapons technology was highly effective.

"We're willing to trade shielding technology in exchange for weapons, yes. And assuming it passes the general assembly, we will," The Abbai ambassador's fin twitched, "I do not like to negotiate for weapons, but I trust Earth more than I trust Narn or Centauri Prime."

"Understandable," John replied, smiling at the thought of shielded Earthforce warships, "Good luck Ambassador."

"And to you, Captain," The Ambassador replied, leading her delegation past him and out the door, "The best of luck to you."

John smiled back, knowing full well that the woman might have just sealed the coffin on his court-martial. Miss Corey muttered a series of four letter profanities before hissing, "You have got to be kidding me? Now? She does this now?"

"I actually approached her about something like this to her when the Imperials destroyed the Trigati." John sighed, "Though I doubt it was presented as my idea when it came up in the Marti of Abbai. It seems like the battle with the Vorlons changed their minds."

"It looks like we're going to do this one on charm alone then. God help you." Miss Corey tore two pages of notes out of her legal brief and stuffed them into a pocket as they walked up to the long wooden table that sat in front of the raised podiums behind which sat the senior members of the military oversight commission, "We can't offer them the Imperial shielding technology without it being interpreted as a tacit preference for them over the Abbai. And we do not want you to appear any more aligned with them than you already appear to be."

"Of course," John was beginning to suspect that the universe was conspiring against him for some reason as he took his seat. The ten men upon the military oversight committee observed him with grim expressions, none of them betraying their feelings towards him. Even Senator Hidoshi, a man who was genuinely in his camp, wore an expression of disapproval.

"It's an act," the lawyer whispered into his ear, "The ones that like you have to look just as angry as the ones that don't for the cameras. This session is being broadcast live."

"This is a military hearing," John hissed back, "Why are they risking the display of sensitive information?"

"Because it's a public enough tragedy that everyone thinks they have a right to hear every question being asked, and they're hoping that you will reveal something so that they can end your career for dishonorable conduct," She whispered back, "It's not playing fair, but it's entirely legal."

"A lot of things seem to be going that way lately," John replied in resignation.

The Vice President looked around the room as everyone found their seats and rapped his gavel upon the podium twice once he was sure the senators were present and accounted for. "Ladies and gentleman of the Earth Alliance Senate, I call the 522nd session of the Spring Congress to order. Senator Lechner, please read the order of business."

Senator Lechner, a red faced man with a bulbous nose, stood up from his seat behind one of the ten podiums and spoke in a sour drone, "Today's business is order G subsection 223.a.5; An Inquiry into events transporting on Babylon 5 on June 15th of 2259."

"Very well, Senator Lechner," The Vice President nodded once before turning towards John, "Are you Captain John Sheridan, commander of Babylon 5?"

John leaned towards his microphone and spoke into it directly, craning uncomfortably to reach it, "Yes Mr. Vice President, I am."

"And do you swear to speak the truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?"

"I do," John replied.

"Then let us begin," The Vice President pulled a thick stack of paper out from a manilla envelope, put on a pair of reading glasses and looked over the stack of paper. A Jamaican man of considerable years, the Vice President was never one to be rushed. He paused for a good minute before saying, "Is this the report you submitted on June 18th?"

John opened his mouth to confirm but his lawyer reached over and snatched the microphone, "My client cannot be sure if the report you have is or is not the report he submitted, without reading the entire report in front of you. He can, however, affirm the accuracy of the report he did submit on the 18th."

"Very well," The Vice President thumbed through the pages, looking at each in turn, "I have to say, it's a fascinating read. Demons, the dead coming back to life, duels of sorcery with Vorlons and even an exorcism."

"Demon was the word used by the Inquisitor, not myself." Though if John were being brutally honest he couldn't think of a more apt word to describe the massive gaping maws and impossible geometries of the creature. The thing had just been unnatural.

"But you do insist that the dead did in fact come back to life," Queried a Chinese senator with a pronounced mandarin slur in her "r" and "n" sounds. Her tone of amused dismissal was contemptuous in its rejection of the idea.

"We do have both corroborating witness statements and Dr. Franklin's death certificates for a dozen sentients who later came back to life and attempted to eat the patients in the Baylon med-bay," Miss Corey interjected, pulling a thick binder out from her box, "We also have the witness statements of a dozens of Earthforce marines."

"You cannae mean for us to believe that this is the product of sorcery," scoffed a Senator with a distinct Scottish brogue.

"I don't," John shook his head, "I refer to the dead rising as 'warp sorcery' because those were the words chosen by Inquisitor Daul Hilder. I don't know how it was done, only that it was."

"Respectfully Senator Joyce, when the dead start rising from their graves with the intention of consuming the flesh of the living, how does one refer to that without making at least casual reference to necromancy?" Senator Lechner joked politely, "If it had happened on my ship when I served in Earthforce doubt I would have resisted referring to it as a sign of the second coming."

The assembled senators broke into polite bursts of laughter, cutting the tension somewhat. Senator Lechner waited for the laughter to subside before breaking into a question of his own, "When Inquisitor Hilder told you there was a demon on the station, did you take him at his word?"

"Of course not. It sounded insane and he assaulted a woman in the process," John replied.

"In spite of your decision to protect the _Endless Bounty_ from a Psi-corps investigation. A decision that robbed a number of young men of their lives," The Chinese woman rejoined. "A curious decision."

"I was following the charter of my station," John ignored the jab, "I protected the Imperial ship because that was the legal thing to do, and I arrested the Inquisitor because he'd broken the law."

"But you now believe that to have been in error?" asked senator Lechner.

"I supported it at the time, but knowing what I know now? Absolutely." John nodded affirmatively, "In a heartbeat."

"Because of the demon," Sneered Senator Joyce.

"Senator, have you seen the video footage of the creature?" Miss Corey snorted, "It's a thirty-foot-tall, endless set of teeth that spat poison, ate sentients, and had an army of the risen dead. If you have a more scientifically palatable name for what the creature manage to do, my client is more than willing to use that."

"My client is understandably emotional," Miss Corey continued with a slight flourish of her hand, "But it cannot be overstated the invasion of the entity could not have been predicted. If you will please check section d-32 of the report I forwarded to all of you, it is abundantly clear that all required safety procedures were taken in the handling of the sleeper ship. The Captain went so far as to have an armed patrol search it. All security measures we knew to take were taken."

The senator grumbled in disapproval, but did not overtly question the matter. The vice president however was not so quiet, "Captain, would you please like to explain why you ordered your ships to open fire upon a sovereign Vorlon vessel?"

"Captain Xinjang had already engaged in a firefight by the time I manage to order fighters to scramble," Captain Sheridan replied, "I merely reacted to the ongoing situation."

"And your decision to involve the Minbari attached to the machine on the planet below?" Queried an Arab senator in irritation, "Was that truly necessary?"

Before John could even consider replying to that question his lawyer had already started speaking, "Captain Sheridan could not have foreseen the force with which the Minbari in the machine would apply to the Vorlon fleet. It was entirely plausible that the Minbari would have negotiated a ceasefire, especially since the Minbari-Vorlon relationship has always previously seemed cordial. Too little is known about how that machine works at all."

"That rather strikes me as a pertinent reason to not agitate the planet-sized death machine, then," Senator Joyce interjected, pushing his glasses back up his nose, "Your previous reports indicated highly aggressive posturing from the planet the last time it was contacted."

"When it was controlled by an unknown," Senator Hidoshi cut in. "Ambassador Delenn assured us that her former mentor was virtually a pacifist. Certainly none of his published works indicated a propensity for such decisive violence."

"Babylon 5 is not equipped to withstand a Vorlon war fleet unaided. When it comes down to a choice between making the Hail Mary play or letting the quarter of a million people on Babylon 5 die, I chose the latter. What else –," John's temper was already starting to show more than was probably wise as his lawyer grabbed him by the sleeve and veritably tossed him back into his seat whispering, "Not now!"

"Honorable Senators, this is not reasonable," She asserted, holding up a picture of the Vorlon Ambassador, "The wanton deaths caused by the Vorlon Kosh Naranek indicated a clear pattern of violence that would have been directed at Babylon 5. The war criminal Naranek remains under house arrest until he can be sent back to Vorlon space."

John felt that house arrest was a generous term for pointing guns at his door and hoping he didn't come out and murder everything in his path, but pointing that out seemed unlikely to help his current situation. Leaning past Miss Corey he vocalized an irritation that had been nagging at him for a while, "Speaking of which has the Vorlon government replied to our request that he be removed from the station, or have his diplomatic status revoked so that we can try him for murder?"

"Kosh Naranek... has not been recalled by his government," Senator Hidoshi uttered in a voice of disgust. "They assert that he acted within the limits of 'higher law,' and thus is not accountable for his actions. He will remain their Ambassador."

"Like hell he will!" John stood up and grabbed the microphone, ignoring his lawyers attempts to snatch it back from him, "This is outrageous!"

"I couldn't agree with you more, Captain," A firm midwestern twang rang across the senate floor as an aging man in a angularly cut grey suit. William Morgan Clark, president of the Earth Alliance, strode down the steps of the senate, looking as presidential as John had ever seen him, "This entire procedure is outrageous."

"President Clark," Senator Müller, a portly german man with an unconvincing wig, sighed in irritation, "Is there a reason you're interrupting this investigation?"

"I'd say that the far more pressing question is why the Earth Alliance Senate is sitting around and accusing a war hero of being derelict in his duty," The President strode between the desk and the raised podiums, his quarter brogue oxfords clicking across the floor. He continued till he stood in the exact center of the room, on top of the semi-precious stones set into the floor in the shape of the Earth Alliance seal before continuing.

"Captain Sheridan is a man who stood up to the Minbari, the Centauri, the Narn, and even the Vorlons. He has stood defiant and he has won. This man, more than any of us, embodies Earth's fighting spirit and will to continue."

"Mr. President," Interjected Senator Joyce in irritation, "I do not appreciate you trying to make this issue of station of oversight into a political matter."

"Isn't it, though?" The President shook his head, "We're looking for a head to put on the chopping block because someone must be responsible, and it's natural to look for the man who is seated highest. He has the farthest to fall, after all, and the only thing people love more than a hero is to watch him fall. Well, I don't know about you all, but I'm damn tired of us tossing away our heroes."

There was an affirmative set of murmurs from the collected Senators, matched by an irritated hiss from Clark's political opposition. John's blood ran cold as it became abundantly clear that the President had aligned himself with the Captain. He had to resist jumping in shock when the president walked up next to him and slapped him jovially on the shoulder, "Well I believe in heroes. And Captain Sheridan is as heroic as they come. I don't know about the rest of you but I have read the station logs from that day. If the Captain will indulge me, I would like to speak in his defense briefly."

"Yes," John spoke, though it felt like another person was actually saying the words as he saluted the commander and chief, "Of course, Mr. President."

"This is taken from a letter written by the head of the dock worker's guild, a miss Neeoma Connally. She mailed it to me after she found out that the Captain was possibly going to face court martial," He clucked as he pulled his glasses and the letter from a jacket pocket, "I'll skip past the paragraph where she uses some rather unpleasant words to describe the person who came to the decision to remove Captain Sheridan from Command. And I quote 'The fact that any of us managed to live through the horrors of June is thanks to John Sheridan. The Captain faced down an army of the undead, staying behind in the market district to make time for the rest of us to hide. I don't know what went wrong but if anyone wants to say it's John Sheridan they're going to have to go through the dock workers first."

He held up the letter and waved the twelve pages to demonstrate his point, "There are eight hundred signatures on this letter. The surviving dock workers, not a one of them even begins to blame John Sheridan for this. Four thousand surviving crew and administration, and none of them blame John Sheridan for this."

"And what of Commander Susan Ivanova's defection to the Empire? What of her secret telepathy?" senator Joyce interjected, "Are we to believe that he was wholly ignorant of this?"

"Susan's what!" John squawked, completely forgetting decorum, "How! Why? When?"

"The former commander Ivanova fooled everyone she knew for twenty nine years," Senator Lechner shook his head, "The Captain cannot be realistically expected to outwit a woman who can read his mind. That's the entire purpose of the Psi-corps, to avoid that sort of abuse of power.

"Sorry, I want to go back to Susan Ivanova being in the Imperium. How the hell do you know that and why wasn't I informed?" John only realized he was shouting half way through talking. Christ, who was Garibaldi on his way to save? Had there ever even been a woman on the ship with Bester?

The Captain's heart stopped a beat. The Guards whose minds had been altered were also men he'd assigned to guarding the Inquisitor. Bester might have been a skilled enough telepath to alter men's minds but Daul Hilder was skilled enough to warp reality, "No... no she couldn't have... It isn't... how?"

"This farce has gone on long enough," sighed the President. "I am abolishing this inquiry under article three of the Zelenka Act. Any actions taken by Captain Sheridan in the defense of his station were taken under wartime conditions and thus are not subject to peacetime expectations."

"This is outrageous," barked the irritated Chinese Senator. "It is an outright abuse of power! The Zelenka Act can only be invoked when war has been declared by a foreign power. I challenge this action!"

"You're welcome to try and overrule me in the general assembly," replied the President as he shouted out to the crowd, "Is there a second?"

"I second," replied the Senator Joyce, red-faced with anger.

"Very well then," The Vice President, apparently the only person in the room who'd been expecting this turn of events, chuckled in amusement, "We shall put it to a vote, then."

"All in favor of upholding the President's invocation of the Zelenka Act," Green lights flashed from the Senators' cubicles as they pressed the affirmative votes on their vid screens. John looked around the room trying to get a sense for how many had voted in his favor, but could not be sure.

"And all those opposed?" Another round of lights flashed, this time red, as Clark's opposition weighed in. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but there seemed to be fewer nay votes.

The Vice President waited a minute to be sure that all the votes had been tabulated by the computer before smiling slightly. He fell slightly into his native patois as he said, "Well den' twoud' seem 'dat you've managed another one, Clark. The Act is upheld by fifty two votes."

"Justice prevails, as it should," replied Clark as he walked over to John Sheridan and held out his hand. The President smiled and said, "It would be my honor if you'd allow me to give you a ride back to Babylon 5 on Earthforce One."

John stared at the hand of the man he knew to have killed the previous president, the man he was secretly working to overthrow. President Clark was man who he trusted less than a snake in the grass. Shaking the man's hand would be a show of televised support for a man who'd knowingly committed regicide. It would, for better or worse, link him publicly to the Clark administration.

John shook the viper's hand, knowing full well he would one day be the President's undoing. "Thank you, Mr. President."

He would get to continue running Babylon 5. A key portion of the Earth Alliance government would remain outside of Clark's control, no matter the public perception. And the reality of what he was doing far outstripped the importance of any temporary political embarrassment.

An injury well earned was better than none, so long as it won you the war.

* * *

Sáclair didn't know what to make of hyperspace. He understood the warp, how it felt against the ship's hull, the dangerous creatures perpetually clawing at its wards. It was familiar territory to him. But on the urging of his Navigators he'd permitted the Centauri and Narn ships to lead the _Endless Bounty_ through the forgotten paths of hyperspace, so that performance tests could be conducted under controlled conditions.

The potential boon of avoiding the warp was too tempting to ignore. Yet had he realized the vast emptiness of the endless red sea, he might have reconsidered. It was maddeningly empty. No life, no sound, no light, no dangers, it was just an endless sea of shifting color and black. If the warp was hell, hyperspace was most certainly purgatory. According to the Narn Ambassador, if one were to become cast adrift they would spend eternity without ever encountering another living soul.

A ship lost in hyperspace was lost forever, never to return.

In a very real way, it was more nightmarish than the warp. He'd removed his mind from the ship an hour into the maddening silence, the absence of sensation made him too dizzy to function. One could not spend eternity stumbling through darkness like a man plummeting through empty air. If not for the braille-like abrasions of astropathic signals from hyperspace gates, he might have believed there was no exit from the void.

The sockets in his arms itched painfully, begging for the sensation of swimming through space that he'd ignored for weeks. But there was no reprieve in the silver filament, nor was there release to be found in drink. The bastard of an Inquisitor had, in his infinite wisdom, decided that there would be no drinking liquor prior to the battle. Aided and abetted by an standing order to the serving staff left by his wife, he'd not touched a drop of anything stronger than recaf in three days.

It was insufferable. Deprived of wife, concubines, children, his ship, and even a stiff drink; how in the blazes did they expect a man to live like that? His only companion at home was David, his bastard. And David spend the majority of his time pining after a girl far above his station.

"Sir," Donat approached the great throne, data-slate in hand, "The Jan'kir reports that we are ten minutes from our destination."

"Finally," Sálcair exhaled in relief, cracking fingers between interlocking palms as he stretched out his arms, "What do the forward scouts report?"

"Nothing good sir," Donat tapped his hololith with his quill, prompting the massive hololithic display in the hall to switch to a map of the Akdor. A disjointed connection of friend and foe markers darted about the orbiting moons, advancing and retreating from the planet's southern continent, "As you can see, the Alliance military has already launched an offensive on the rebel fortress... Matok I believe. The ships marked in green are of Earth Alliance and Sh'Lassen make, and the yellow dots are rebel ships."

He twisted his stylus and zoomed in on an section of space that distorted slightly from second to second, occasional burst of energy firing from seemingly nowhere, "These are what we believe to be the ships sent by Faust. It fits the sort of sensor interference we encountered from the ship above Belzafest. Thankfully, it's seemingly less efficient."

"They're Throne well efficient enough," Sáclair swore, "Get the Astropaths to work on some sort of solution to this. We can't keep using our own pilots for targets when we need to shoot someone."

"I don't think we'll need to; there is enough of a sensor ghost for us to triangulate a rough approximation of where the shots are coming from," Donat chewed his lip, his expressionless face contrasting with the slight worry in his voice, "My worry is that we aren't going to be able to do it unless we get someone firing at us."

"Donat, we're a good half kilometer longer than the next closest ship and we're flying under the banner of the double eagle. Of all the things I fear, 'not enough people are shooting at us' doesn't even make my top twenty," Sáclair inserted the silver filament from his throne into his arm, gagging at the cloying nothingness, "Throne ,that is sodding frigid! How the devil do the xenos travel through this?"

"The Navigators share your sentiments. They've been rotating in and out of their trances at twenty minute intervals for fear they might lose their minds in the vast emptiness," Donat growled in hatred, "My understanding is that the xenos... the xenos use... they use thinking machines to achieve the same effect."

Sáclair wished he could have some wine to settle his stomach at the thought of that many thinking machines. The fall of the first great and bountiful human society came at the hands of the Men of Iron, nearly bringing about their destruction. The Emperor had, in his boundless wisdom, decreed that no thinking machines should be allowed in his Imperium. To be so wholly reliant upon such technological devilry was unthinkable, "We're certain that the thinking machines aren't taking us to an ambush?"

"As sure as we may be," Donat absently scratched at the back of his head with his finger, "Heresy though it may be do admit it sir... I don't suspect the xenos of betrayal."

"Nor do I, Mr. Enzo, which is part of what troubles me." Sáclair's fingers traced over the firing controls of his weapons ports, realizing idly that he hadn't even considered passively targeting them, "But we are under the writ of Inquisitorial mandate of Hilder ,and will act as such. If he's determined to toss himself headlong into a warzone, who am I to disagree?"

"Of course, milord," Donat manipulated the map again, focusing upon the hyperspace gate, "Post-hyperspace combat is highly limiting due to the bottleneck inherently derivative of gate use. The enemy knows exactly where we're going to come from."

"But the shields will be up before we leave correct?" Sáclair grinned in anticipation, watching the chronometer count down to zero, "And our assault forces are all prepared to head to the front lines?"

"Yes sir," Donat nodded, "But I need to remind you that we're at half stock of ammunition and have precious few cyclonic torpedoes left. We have the lances, but they are hamstrung due to the targeting errors caused by Faust's ECM."

"We'll make due with what we have," Sáclair said, virtually seething with anticipation. So close, his reprieve from the emptiness was just out of thumbed the shipwide intercom and barked out, "All hands to battle-stations."

The lights dimmed and his crew scurried about the hall below, moving to their battle stations. The atmosphere was tense, but curiously expectant. Having been so regularly bloodied in since the assault of Belzafest, their hearts were hardened to the danger. They knew what the Lord Sáclair expected from them, and would do so without question.

A pregnant minute of utter silence passed before the hiccuping chirrup of an incoming transmission echoed through the hall. A young officer's appeared on the hololith to address his captain, "My Lord Sáclair. We've received a hail from the _G'Noa's Fury_. They say it's time."

"Then we shan't disappoint them, shall we?" Sáclair leaned back in his throne. "I say it's high time we repaid Faust for Belzafest. To Victory!"

"To Victory!" Echoed every voice on the hall, chanting again and again, "For the Emperor! To Victory!"

Sáclair closed his eyes and sunk into the nothingness. The titanic form of the _Endless Bounty _swam in open air, followed by a school of smaller crescent and angular xenos craft. Straight ahead of them was a puncture in the nothing, a brief window into sensation and existence. Two large Earth Alliance ships, though smaller still than the Endless Bounty, sat on either side of the puncture, wedging it open.

The nimble Narn and Centauri fighter craft exited the puncture first, the rest of the fleet following soon after into the light and warmth of realspace. Sáclair squirmed in pleasure even as the irritating pinpricks of weapons registered across the void-shields.

The battlefield was bedlam; the still-smoldering hulls of a thousand Sh'lassen ships littered the outer belts of asteroids, confusing sensors with ghosts of weapons-fire as the unused munitions in their magazines detonated. He could vaguely sense weapons-fire in the distance, his limited mind registering the ongoing dogfighting as the sharp sound of a cracking whip.

"Finally," Sáclair growled in eagerness, "Engines to full! We need to get to the drop point."

"Incoming fighters!" Sacomér barked in earnest surprise as dozen blurry shapes rocketed towards the fleet, appearing from the radiation. They swarmed a Centauri warship, pelting it with laser fire before swooping away as it exploded in a spectacular ball of radioactive flame.

A second Centauri warship broke formation to chase the fighter craft only to get crippled by a second fighter wing. It spun helplessly in the air as the escort fighters scrambled to protect it from bombardment.

"I've had enough of this," Sáclair hissed in irritation, "Launch all fighters. Weapons-free. Let's bring the fight to them. And Mr. Andrews! Give them a taste of their own medicine."

The forward gun batteries belched atomic death into the asteroid belt, firing irregular staccato bursts of fury into the sensor ghosts. The ghosts fled, dropping low to avoid his assault, straight into the closing jaws of the Narn fighter wings.

It was over in seconds. However, the destruction of the enemy fighter wings was only a brief respite for their assault force. Larger shapes were approaching, cruisers less able to conceal themselves from the sensors of the _Endless Bounty_.

"Sir, the enemy ships will reach firing distance within two minutes," Donat manipulated his quill across his data slate, "It seems that the Earth Alliance weren't able to distract all enemies from the jump-gate."

"Best not to be here when they come then," Sáclair whooped in amusement, "Drop our surprise and advance. This was not an unforeseen possibility."

The enemy ships controlled the space both above and below the asteroid field, with the exception of a narrow spearhead of space controlled by the Earth Alliance too far to the planet's southern pole for them to feasibly reach. According to G'Kar, the asteroid field was considered to be too hazardous for any ship larger than a one man fighter to safely navigate, which was partly why the gate was put on the other side of it by the Sh'lassen. They could control the rate of enemy advance.

Just as well that the Empire made their ships of sterner stuff than the average Alliance cruiser. Trusting in the competence of the Narn to destroy the enemy fighters, Sáclair pushed forward, leading the cruisers through the asteroid field. The massive armored prow of the Endless Bounty smashed through the massive stones, shoving forward though the space debris with ease as he fired the forward lance batteries into the field.

The fleet filed down the narrow path, ships keeping close together to travel in the _Endless Bounty_'s wake. Sáclair counted down from fifty, tapping his finger on the arm of his throne and watching the sensor map of the asteroid belt. As the last friendly cruiser darted to a safe distance from their egress into the asteroid field he flipped the switch to his left, activating a series of proximity mines loaded with vortex bombs.

His sensors flashed every warning imaginable as a massive section of space became engulfed in a maelstrom of extra-dimensional energies. Vortex bombs were not explosives per-se; they opened a hole into the warp that sucked in any unshielded fighters or men unfortunate enough to be within their radius for the few seconds it could be maintained. They were deviously simple to make: a warp engine large enough to be fitted into a fighter was set into critical overload and left on some sort of pressure trigger or proximity sensor. If they had them, larger ships might activate their hexegrammic wards in time to avoid destruction, but by the time the enemy ships made it back to the battlefield he'd be long gone.

The_ Endless Bounty_ tore through the inner ring of asteroids and into the orbit of Akdor, directly into a conflagration between the Earth Alliance and Sh'lassen rebel forces. Laughing like a madman, Sáclair pushed the ship's engines to their limits, passing the performance red line as he smashed the _Bounty's _prow through one of the oblong rebel ships, bursting it in half before spinning the Bounty in an upward pirouette and shouting, "Port batteries, full salvo in three, two, one, fire!"

Three ships were smashed into atoms under the massive salvo. The Earth Alliance Starfuries swung in through the atomic flames, using the cloak of the salvo to mask their advance on a fourth ship. Sáclair smiled contentedly as his consul chirruped eagerly, heralding an incoming transmission. He idly activated it, whooping with glee as the Centauri Primus wing shot past him and into the Sh'lassen rebel fleet.

The sour, almond-eyed face of Captain Xingjian popped up on his screen. The Alliance Captain growled in begrudging thanks, his slurred l's and r's exacerbated by his irritation. The automated translation servitor droned in it's seductive lilt, "What are you doing here 該死?"

"Charming as always Xingjian," Sáclair smiled, twirling his fingers and firing a lance shot into a fighter wing that was straying too close to a Narn Cruiser for his liking. The fighters scattered. "A simple 'thank you' will suffice in future."

"Answer the question," Xingjian's eyes popped with fury even as his ship's lights flickered from the impact of enemy fire, "Or I will consider you an enemy combatant."

The man was completely mental. Sáclair rolled his eyes in exasperation and wordlessly sent a message to the aft weapons batteries to target Xingjian's ships as a precautionary measure, "Captain, I'm here as part of the council relief fleet on behalf of the Non-Aligned Worlds. Now, if you'd be so kind as to remove your head from where you've so readily wedged it up your own ass and get back to fighting the enemy rather than wasting my time, I would take it kindness."

Xingjiang's face boiled with apoplectic rage as Sáclair deactivated their transmission in disinterest. Xingjiang was under orders not to fire on Non-Aligned Worlds ships, and he could be trusted to obey it. If not, that was why the Emperor gave the Imperium void shields.

"Tactical report, Mr. Enzo."

His second chewed his lip in thought, "Faust's fleet seems to have been driven back to the second moon of the planet by the Earth Alliance and Sh'lassen government forces, though by all reports they're regrouping rather than retreating. Early chatter is commenting that they're retrofitted military surplus from a recent war with shields and Faust's xenotech rather than proper Imperial military standard."

"Well that's something at least," Sáclair smiled in pleased surprise as a Centauri cruiser interposed itself between a damaged Narn ship and it's attacker, taking the brunt of the attack before a second Centauri Primus could destroy the rebel warship. "Is this rabble the entire rebel fleet?"

"Near as I can tell sir," Donat sighed, "But I don't even pretend to have a complete understanding of the tactical situation, Faust's ECM makes me far from confident in the astropathic sensors."

"Best to act sooner rather than later," Sáclair remarked as he spun the_ Endless Bounty_ back towards the planet. Sáclair plowed forwards, aiming to punch through the rebel blockade and reach the Earth Alliance beachhead, "Donat, send a message to Hilder and the ground assault forces. We launch the Golan transports as soon as they're close enough to reach the planet's atmosphere safely. I don't want to spend too much time stationary in this maelstrom."

Sáclair winced in pain as a lucky shot from an Sh'lassen rebel missile cruiser burst through the ship's forward shields, bursting against the ship's armored hull, " I feel the need to register my abject displeasure with these Sh'lassen traitors in the most direct of terms."

"Of course, milord. Lance batteries are ready on your command."

* * *

Daul stood sat impassively in the Golan transport as it plummeted earthwards, counting down from a thousand as angry, black thunderclouds whipped past its tiny viewport. Not in the mood for the Lionhearts' good-willed round of insults, he only half listened as they accused each other of the vilest of perversions and misdeeds. A nagging feeling of dread tugged at the back of his mind, a fear that this battle might be his undoing.

Before the battle of Belzafest, he'd been prepared to die. After losing so much at the hands of Faust, ending it all in a blaze of honor and duty had been perversely appealing. But there would be little profit in his death on the Sh'lassen world of Akdor, not unless Faust lay dead and on the ground. And there was a part of his heart, an honest part, that admitted he did not want to risk the lives of those who fought at his side. Well, those who fought at his side and weren't Vira'capac; the dour Kroot just utterly refused to die.

It perched on top of a Chimera with its talons wrapped around the gun barrel, entirely disinterested in sitting in a safety harness. After spending so much time in a cell on the _Endless Bounty,_ it seemed that the xenos had developed an acute distaste for confinement. The Chimera's drivers, a pair pale-skinned Belzafesters, stared murderously at the Kroot as it luxuriated on top of their transport.

The entire surviving Belzafest PDF had volunteered for the mission, resulting in a bizarre situation where they'd had to have ship security guarding the transports to prevent soldiers stowing away to be part of the military engagement. Hatred still burned strong in the hearts of Belzafest for the destroyers of their ancestral homeland. Gaer Tiber's men would do their duty or die trying.

Daul's "personal guard" consisted of a half dozen men led by Gaer's most trusted Lieutenant Cynry Shan, a bellicose man of few words and deliberate actions. They were all men who'd lost their entire families to Faust, men who could be trusted to obey without question. And after months in the deserts of Belzafest, their skill was without question. They prayed in silence, ignoring the boisterous good humor of the Lionhearts.

"I can hear it," whispered a soft feminine presence to his left. Susan Ivanova stared at the deck plates in concentration as though trying to see through them, "The warp - I can hear it... rumbling. Something is very wrong."

"As can I," Daul agreed, "Witchfire and sorcery is being used in great quantities on the planet. It leaves a stain upon the material world. It does not belong. Practice what I taught you. Clear your mind. Embrace the calm within. The hatred, the dying, and even the suffering: block them from your thoughts."

Susan closed her eyes and steadied her breathing, inhaling and exhaling whilst whispering words in the language of her pagan faith to focus herself. She was only a few weeks into her training but she'd advanced as far as Daul might have expected an apprentice to achieve ten years along the way thanks to the borrowed memories. She wasn't remotely close to his own talent, but she was a force to reckon with in her own right.

She hated him, to be sure, but they'd reached a functioning relationship out of necessity since he'd cut off the possibility of her returning to the Earth Alliance by publicly declaring her a telepath and ward of the Empire to the Narn and Centauri. Returning to the Alliance would mean arrest and capture by the Psi-corps to probe her for knowledge of Imperial sorcery, and she knew it.

"That's it," Daul said soothingly, "Clear out your mind and find your place of calm. You control it. It does not control you."

Cair warbled twice, twittering at their imminent arrival as the elephantine transport bucked upwards from anti-gravity pads meeting ground level. The Skitarii hefted an oversized bolt-gun with an extended barrel magazine and flexed sharp taloned fingers.

"Throne, Cairn," Danzig eyed the array of odd devices around his belts, satchels, and bandolier, "You were never for lack of gear but even _**I**_ can't think of a reason for some of that... Is that an Ulumethi plasma syphon? Where the devil did you even- you know what? I don't actually want to know."

"Better prepared than deprived," the dour Lieutenant Shan whispered, his voice raspy and high pitched through a breath mask.

"Masks on," Daul ordered as the front doors to the transport opened, thick ash and soot billowing into the cool air of the transport, "Mount up."

The collective mass of Lionhearts and Belzafester soldiers entered their respective Chimera transports. The clanking of boots on the light transport tanks mingled with the activating rumble of burning promethium engines. Daul climbed into the front Chimera of the column with Susan, Danzig, Carin, Vira'capac, and his personal guard of Belzafesters, surveying the men in approval.

The Inquisitor tapped the radio on his skull-like helmet to talk with the transport's pilot, "Report, soldier. How many of our forces made it to the planet?"

"Sir," the eager Belzafester replied, "We lost two Golan transports to anti-aircraft fire, sections B and D, but G and R companies were forced to redirect to the southern ridge before unloading their packages."

"To the pit of the Eye," Daul swore angrily, "You mean that the Leman Russ tanks are two hundred miles off target?"

"At least," The pilot agreed, "And their transport is grounded till they can patch a reactor leak. Our air support is coming but they've been delayed by Faust's aircraft to the north. Apparently they have to take out an earth to space laser battery before the Narn can land their tanks."

"Of course they are." Danzig sighed, massaging the frustration out of his temples in resigned irritation, "Are the rest of our transports on target, at least?"

"Yes sir," The officer said before correcting himself, "Or at least... I believe so. We're having trouble communicating with anything longer range than twenty miles."

"It will have to do." sighed Shan in resignation, "The Earth Alliance will send them aid as soon as feasible to get them into position."

"Just once, I would like to have the support forces in position beforehand," Daul sighed, "Never mind. We're only ten miles from the Earth Alliance forward outpost. Begrudging our lack of artillery won't make more appear."

Taking that as a queue, Cairn banged twice on the door to the cockpit, whistling sharply to the driver. With a lurch of motion the Chimera zoomed headlong into the Akdor badlands, bouncing its way over the rough terrain of the planet. Daul rocked forward uncomfortably against his harness at every rock and divot, to the point where he started to wonder if the Chimera's shocks had been intentionally tampered with out of spite.

"Throne almighty," the voice of Sergei cracked across the radio from the end of the column, "Are we aiming for the worst terrain? Gazan is threatening to sew the eyes of our driver open so that he'll properly watch the road."

"The road isn't ideal," replied the irritated voice of Daul's chimera driver, "But if we go on any other paths our treads will get stuck in the ash piles or die when we ignite the methane geysers. Belzafest was a garden paradise compared to this hellhole. The planet itself is a minefield, and I don't like the idea of blowing up."

"Inquisitor, you always do take me to the loveliest places," Snorted Danzig in amusement, "Perhaps next time we can skip the foreplay and just light ourselves on fire."

"That can still be arranged," Daul replied dry amusement as they hit another bump, yanking him in his chair uncomfortably, "Throne almighty that's uncomfortable."

The Kroot crooned in agreement. Vira'capac licked his left eyeball with his tongue nervously as he preened himself, softly muttering in his own singsong language. The constant motion irritated the Kroot more than anyone else, doubtlessly agitating the gas bladder between the creature's nose and lungs which it used to filter out toxins.

The chain of Chimeras jerked and jostled their way across the inhospitable Akdor landscape, driving across rocky outcroppings and past deep ravines. One of the chimeras turned too soon and disturbed an underground pocket of methane, bursting it and flinging the transport head over heels into a pool of chemical runoff. Daul ordered the vox casters to be switched to another channel to save them from having to listen to the Lionhearts' agonized final screams before giving the order to continue their march.

It was just as well that Danzig decided to do so, apparently the forward scout sentinels had their vox units set to two units above what they were supposed to be broadcasting. The Lionheart growled in irritation, "Throne, has anyone read the void-born mission parameters beyond the summary? It's a miracle they had their vox units active at all."

"I wouldn't blame them," Shan intoned in his raspy near whisper, smoothing his yellow and black checkered tunic. He took special care to brush off the patch embroidered with Daul's personal crest, Shan's symbol of fealty. "The magnetic rock formations will be paying hell with our equipment. We were equipped for the climate of Belzafest, not Akdor. We're ruggedized and air tight, but the magnetic interference of Belzafest was not as pronounced. Communication will be shorter ranged than we'd hoped."

"We're just going to have to operate on the assumption that the individual units reach their intended positions by the time we hit the rendezvous point," Daul sighed in exasperation, "The military aid of our allies ought to compensate for the delays, Emperor willing. They're no Adeptus Astrates, but they'll have to do."

"You have several thousand ground-pounders backed up by tanks and air support. They're as good or better than whatever else is out there," Commander Ivanova interjected irritatedly, "And as good as any other military in service."

Cain tweeted incredulously, eying Susan with a mix of confusion and bemused interest as he scratched his forehead with a long metal talon.

Daul couldn't help himself, he burst into a fit of giggles that drove the commander into frigid silence. Taking a moment to compose himself and sending a minor psychic suggestion to the other soldiers to stifle their own sniggers, he addressed the commander, "Commander Ivanova, the Adeptus Astartes are our…. specialty soldiers. They're monastic warrior orders, bred specifically for the purposes of excelling at warfare. I'm certain that the "Gropos" are admirable soldiersm but the Space Marines are… more than that. An individual Space Marine is equal to any ten of the Lionhearts, and that is being generous."

"You can't be…" the commander trailed off, her eyes glazing over slightly in borrowed memory. She blinked twice to reorient herself before continuing, "Ok, so you are serious. But we don't have them and the ground pounders will do the job. They're good at what they do."

"We shall certainly see," Daul replied indecisively, "Faust will give them more than ample chances."

The transport echoed slightly with the sound of small arms fire against the hull as the driver shouted orders to the gunner. The multi-laser turret swiveled on its axis with a grinding of shifting gears and the hiss of pneumatic pistons, and the echoing _buzz-crack_ of a dozen high powered streams of weaponized energy seared some unseen target. A brilliant burst of flame flashed through the tiny slitted view ports on the transport's sides, braying screams of agony howling in time with the blast.

"All clear," chimed the driver over the intercom before kicking the transport back into gear, "Be on the lookout. Sh'lassen rebel forces are setting ambushes along the path."

Danzig checked the sights on his hot-shot lasrifle, fiddling with the beam transparency. "ETA to target?"

"Target is imminent," replied the driver, "Forward outpost in five, four, three, two, one, mark."

The Chimera rounded a bend in the magnetic rock formations and turned into a formation of Earth Alliance tanks. The angular war machines' powerful laser cannons targeted the Chimera even as they hailed requesting the Imperials identify themselves.

Taking the encrypted vox offered to him by Cairn Daul replied with the identification code, fumbling through the Interlac words, "Whiskey, eagle, eagle, two, delta, two, seven, bravo, one, five."

A tired but friendly voice replied over the vox channel, "Glad to have you here, Inquisitor. We could use all the help we could get. General Franklin is waiting for you on the western ridge in the motor pool."

"Very well," Daul replied, nodding to the driver. The Chimera lumbered along past the massive tanks, giving Daul a clear view of them through the tiny window of transparent plastisteel. He let out a low impressed whistle at the sheer mass of them, easily twice the size of a leman russ with a gun to match. It hovered on powerful antigrav struts, nimbly navigating the rocky terrain as though it were open ground.

"Those are new model Odin and Loki," Susan remarked in surprise, "I didn't know that they'd gotten those in service yet."

"Not too shabby," Danzig commented in earnest, "Not projectile weapons I presume?"

"A dumbed down of the plasma cannons used by warships, it packs a heck of a punch," Susan smiled wistfully, prompting Daul to suspect that she'd very much like to fire one. Cairn was veritably watering at the mouth at the new technologies, his facial tentacles frenziedly drawing the machines for future reference.

The Earth Alliance was primitive in many respects, but confusingly advanced in many others. How could a society so backward in even the most basic understanding of both shielding and psychic technologies have managed to develop such advanced anti-gravity and plasma weaponries? It veritably boggled the mind.

The Chimera shuddered to a halt, its wide door yawning outwards and into a frenzied mass of black-armored marines scuttling around the motor pool in blind purpose. Long necked combat hovercraft landed for just long enough to disgorge the wounded and load a fresh load of soldiers destined for the meat grinder.

Dozens of men bearing wounds from familiar imperial las weaponry as well as the deep tooth and claw marks of half-breed savagery lay on cots. A mess of white coated medics did what they could to save the wounded and comfort the dying, though more came with every trip of the flying transports.

"Inquisitor," A domineering, bespectacled black man barked across the mass of men. Though he was several yards from the Imperials somehow his voice managed to carry across ocean of human suffering without any loss of clarity or absolute authority, "Over here."

It wasn't the most impressive command station Daul had ever seen, certainly no Imperial general would be so gauche as to arrive at a battlefield without at least a proper tent and serving staff, but what the Alliance lacked in grandeur it made up in practicality. A rather meager steel fold out table with an aging map and a small hololithic projector displayed the relative locations of enemy and allied positions, standing as the centerpiece to haphazard piles of tactical printouts and early battle reports. The sour-faced general Franklin brandished these reports at his underlings, barking harsh commands with the absolute expectation that they would be followed out.

Daul approached and bowed, interlocking his hands in the symbol of the Aquilla, "General Franklin."

"Inquisitor Daul Hilder," replied the General placidly before his eyes settled on Susan and an edge of venom seeped into his voice, "The former Commander Ivanova."

"Sir?" The Commander blinked as though slapped.

"I'm well aware of your rising status in the Empire Miss Ivanova." He growled in irritation, "Telepaths cannot serve as an officer of Earthforce, certainly not telepaths who've defected. Consider it an act of mercy that I don't arrest you this instant on behalf of the Psi-corps because I need the Inquisitor's expertise -and don't think for a second an arrest isn't damn tempting."

"Sir I've done nothing wrong," The commander pleaded, a look of abject horror on her face, "I'm in-" Susan stopped mid sentence in shock when the General slapped his palm on the table and stared her in the eyes with a look of indomitable resolve. Even as she sputtered trying to explain herself, he wouldn't even begin to listen to her insistent affirmations of innocence.

"Miss Ivanova, it is in your best interests for you to close your mouth this instant. Settling what you did or did not do is a job for the Psi-corps and a board of inquiry if and when you decide to report back to Babylon 5 where you are currently AWOL. And a General hasn't got time for a derelict soldier," It was cruel of Daul to have forwarded a receipt of the commanders amnesty and new role in Imperial government to the Earth Alliance prior to their departure via Centauri diplomatic channels, but the woman couldn't properly evolve into her new role as long as the hope of returning to her former position abided. Yet another wound inflicted upon his apprentice for her own benefit; she would one day come to appreciate the benefits of what he'd done for her. Not in this century, perhaps, but she would eventually.

General Franklin pulled the stomach of his uniform forwards and straightened his spectacles, tossing a still image across the table towards the inquisitor, "Now Inquisitor, what the devil am I dealing with?"

The image showed a corpse of a bloated and distended creature, that might have been a man if not for its mawkish gait or the thick masses of bony crests and thick tentacles across it' massive mottled black-and-grey flesh. A half breed of Faust's working, to be sure.

Daul cleared his throat. "Nightmares, General. You're fighting monsters and nightmares. They are not creatures of flesh and blood to be reasoned with, they're weapons created with an inscrutable and malevolent purpose."

"Well, I've got a hundred and fifty miles of trench warfare and bunkers full of the fraggers between us and the Sh'lassen rebels at Matok. We can't get anything airborne close enough to make a significant difference in our advance without passing one of the damned anti-aircraft platforms in the fortress or the methane geysers that are just as bad. The best we've been able to do- General xny'Yih? Can you come over here for a moment?" The bespectacled man waved to a hooded figure some twelve feet away chatting with a number of other hooded men. It hobbled forward as the General continued, "The best we've been able to do is just slow the rate of attrition. The black devils are dug in tight."

The hooded figure pulled back his cowl to reveal the goat-like face of a Sh'lassen man. The creature swiveled its unnerving golden eyes to Daul and chattered in a braying sneer of annoyance, "The heretics are defiling the place of the Old Gods, the teachings of our forefathers and the only thing standing between us and reclaiming the truth that is ours are these... these... beasts!"

The irony of calling another species a beast was apparently lost upon the harsh voiced longhorn. It stamped its bipedal hooves and pulled at a thick rope of golden fibers, shaking its head in unmistakable exasperation. Daul bowled enough to be respectful, but not so much as to imply obsolescence, "You are of the Triumvirate, I presume."

"General xny'Yih," Confirmed the bestial humanoid, " I've been leading the siege of Matok these past two years to reclaim the truth that belongs to all."

"What truth?" probed the Commander.

The beast man fixed her with his unnerving gaze, eyes narrowed in irritation, "If I knew it, I wouldn't need to waste two years watching men die. The rebels claim it and our ancestral fortress to be theirs and theirs alone. 'We are not ready' bah. Who are they to judge who may know the nameless' brilliance in battling the nightmares of old."

"Faust doesn't send his troops en-masse somewhere unless there is something of legitimate value to be taken. Whatever it is that he wants, we cannot allow him to have it. Faust is a war criminal worse than any you've ever seen," Balefire flickered around Daul in his anger, "He _must _not succeed."

"Precisely what is he guilty of doing in the Imperium?" Probed General Franklin in expectant curiosity as he eyed the red shapes moving around the hololithic map. Waves of green flickered into and out of view in the haze of red.

"Much," whispered Shan in a voice of horrible calm, "He is guilty of murder, torture, slavery, genocide, and the destruction of the Belzafest colony, as well as countless others for well over a century."

"He destroyed a city?" General Franklin interjected in disbelief.

"Belzafest was a planet," corrected Daul, "Whatever his goal is here, we must ensure he does not succeed. The crimes on Belzafest were some of his lesser evils. Entire planetary populations have been put to death for fear his half-breeds might poison off-worlders."

"We've been doing what we can to stop infections. The venomous stinger's entry wound is quite distinctive, but short of amputating the limb we haven't been able to find a way of curing the poison without killing the soldier," brayed the Sh'lassen general in anger, "But communication with the frontline soldiers is so bad that it's often too late to do anything other than shoot the poor bastard before he goes mad from the venom."

"I was referring to a more metaphorical poison," Daul cleared his throat uncomfortably, "The half-breeds are male... they favor the use of other sentient species females for incubating their young. The woman is forcibly implanted with around a dozen pups. The process is slow, so that the mother can attempt to flee back to safety and spread the half-breeds to a new population center they do not yet mother becomes their first meal after they chew their way out. I rather thought it might have come up before now without me needing to say..."

"We do not send our females to war," brayed xny'Yih in preoccupation, "So it would not have. It may soon become problematic however."

General Franklin shot one of his underlings a worried look, "Lieutenant Davis, issue an immediate warning to all soldiers. Tell them exactly what the Inquisitor just told me, word for word. Lets not take any chances. And issue an order not to let them take POWs under any circumstances."

"Easier said than done," Susan rejoined, puckering her lips inward in shame at the Generals spiteful glare.

The General waited a full minute, staring at her in uncomfortable silence before continuing as though the Commander had never spoken. "They've got the whole inner valley under their control. Environmental conditions prevent air support, so we're going to have to do this one the old fashioned way. Even our air support can't safely operate higher than about thirty stories up. The Narn and Centauri are massing for a combined assault on the northern front with General Andre's troops so that we can cut them off from the west and force them to retreat into the rebel artillery. Your Imperial vehicles are going to need to spearhead that western assault."

"Faust will have group of a non-half breeds guiding the war effort," Daul tapped the thickest mass of red on the map, "If we can get to them and kill their leaders we should be able to mop up the remaining troops with relative ease. They're bred for ferocity, not cleverness."

"I will have a guide assigned to you to guide you through the terrain," hawed the Sh'lassen general, "There are still a few left who manage to survive the loss of our forward lines who should know some of the secret paths and safe havens."

"Incoming!" screamed a frenzied ensign as she and everyone else in the encampment dropped to the ground. A whistling thrum sung through the air as an explosive shell collided with the sooty earth half a mile away from where Daul stood, kicking up a brilliant explosive burst of flame and debris. The Inquisitor winced and thumbed the controls to his helmet's audio feed, drowning out the screams of pain from distant soldiers.

Cairn aided Daul in rising to his feet, irritatedly brushing off his Talbard with a brush he'd produced from Throne alone knew were. Daul shoved the brush away in exasperation and chided him in Gothic, "Cairn, the blessed thing will be soaked in blood and all manner of horrible things before the day is through. A bit of soot won't do any more damage."

His attendant crossed his arms and eyed him irritatedly, the brush quirked to the side and chirruping irritatedly as though to say "well you go and wash it then why don't you?" Putting the sarcastic Skitarii from his mind, he lifted his apprentice to her feet, "Up you get, Commander Ivanova. We haven't got all day."

"They've moved their artillery closer than your map would indicate," Danzig flipped up from where he lay back to the ground with acrobatic ease, his wide silk pants flaring over his combat armor, "Or they have equipment that's better than you reported."

"Assume the latter," Vira'capac crooned in irritation, "Man things never get better answer. Worse always than plans. Highly irritating that Vira'capac has not died yet. Perhaps get lucky this time. Perhaps not."

"General." A woman's voice cracked across the relative silence like a whip, preceding the arrival of a lean woman of dark completion. Her name was just visible behind the long dreadlocks that hung down her uniform, Tonya Wallace. Precisely what rank ISN indicated was lost upon Daul but the brevity and familiarity with which she treated the General left no doubt of her importance. The word "reporter" echoed in his mind vaguely, though it' meaning found no purchase in the Gothic language, "General, I want to know why I haven't been assigned to a military unit yet. I'm supposed to be reporting from the front lines."

"Miss Wallace," replied the General in a tone of exhausted repetition, as though having an argument he'd long ago tired of fighting, "The situation is far more volatile than we initially anticipated. Once we have a more solid foothold into the – What are they called Inquisitor?"

"The proper name would be _xenodeamonia hälféraza Knyttneve_, but 'half-breed' is more than sufficient," Daul replied, eyeing the silver hovering disks that floated around the woman and wondering as to their purpose.

"Lord Almighty, that is a mouthful," The General shook his head, "The half-breeds are a lot tougher and more dangerous than we realized."

"The initial report I got from the Sh'lassen government said that 'the bowels of hell have yawned open to disgorge a mass of the most horrendous creatures from the time of nightmares when death first touched the land.' Was that insufficiently descriptive?" She was a noble of notable standing to be able to afford that sort of device and talk to a general disrespectfully without fear of reprisal. Perhaps he could use this to his advantage.

"If the Lady Wallace desires she could accompany our party," Daul interjected before the General could open his mouth and say something foolish to the noblewoman, "Provided that she is willing to accept the dangers I face at the forefront."

Susan stared at Daul in utter disbelief before making a soft "oh" of comprehension with her lips and bursting into a fit of silent giggles. Ivanova really was an odd woman at times. Daul suspected it might be a long term side effect of the combined memories though he couldn't be sure. Ignoring her strange behavior he continued, "The potential for fatal harm is great, but if you are willing to shoulder the risk then you may come."

The noblewoman veritably salivated at the opportunity, shooting a wry glance at the Alliance general. "Yes, yes that would be entirely OK with me!"

"I can't stop you Miss Wallace," The General replied irritatedly, covering his ears as another shell burst some sixty yards from the Alliance forward outpost, "But you're going to have to go now. Inquisitor we need to start pressing forward towards the west sooner than I'd planned. If we don't get rid of that damned artillery we're going to lose the forward momentum and they'll have time to regroup."

"Well we can't very well have that," Daul nodded looked down at the hololithic display and its sea of red waving around the great spire of Matok. He laughed sharply and clutched the ethereal image in his augmentic fist, red images distorting around the ivory digits, "Cairn, I do believe that it's time for us to pay a visit to our old friends and voice our displeasure."

The Skitarii growled in agreement, flexing its talons in anticipation of the hunt to come.

* * *

Magos Adept Tuul swore in irritation as an electrified cable came loose from the ceiling and crashed down across the gangway, crushing a servitor into a pile of messy gore and offal. The sizzling meat of the servitor splashed wetly across his face and optics, briefly obscuring his vision.

It was times like these that he was grateful to have removed his digestive system. Now was no time for nausea.

"I want the primary reactor back online! I don't care what you have to do, the auxillaries can't compensate for the power drop for much longer!" Tuul bellowed over the loudspeaker, "And get a repair team over to deck twelve to fix the carbon dioxide scrubbers before the crew suffocates."

Tuul grabbed the power cable in the arm of his servo harness, enjoying the tingling sensation of 50,000 volts arcing across his insulated limbs. He cackled madly to himself as he shoved the power line into a junction point, twisting it in before forcing a rudimentary seal with ferrocrete epoxy. It wouldn't last the battle, but it ought to hold out until Enginseers could manage a more permanent repair.

"Sir," a red robed Enginseer said as he hopped over the liquified servitor, holding out a data slate at arm's length so as not to stand in any of the puddles, "The Lord Sáclair needs us to increase the power output of the starboard Y-axis thrusters by ten percent to offset the main guns. We're getting too much lateral drag from gunfire."

"Then fix it, why don't you? Take a maintenance team to the thrusters and recalibrate the power couplings," Tuul eyed the power readouts on the data slate anxiously, "And get Enginseer Sven down to deck 17. Something has to be wrong with the power readouts - it's showing 100% efficiency in the shield generators."

Nothing ever ran at 100% efficiency, especially not mid-battle. How in the hell had Kerrigan made this look so effortless? She'd never been caught short of breath; even when she'd had to surrender she'd apparently done it with grace and poise. Perhaps it had something to do with being a woman. There was at least correlative data to suggest a link between being more collected in a crisis and being female.

If he survived he'd have to consider increasing the ratio of estrogen in his remaining biological components to see if it boosted performance, "Enginseer Throm, what in the hell are you trying to do? Blow up the ship? Don't try to reactivate the reactor till after you've flushed the excess radiation."

Tuul ducked under a mess of cables and grabbed hold of a narrow ladder, glad for his augmentic fingers as the ship bucked to the left. His mechanical digits held fast to the ladder as the rest of his considerable mass swung head over heels off the platform and into open air.

His mechandrites whipped out, subconsciously lacing themselves around the ladder to prevent him from plummeting down the mile-deep chasm of the main engineering bay.

"Omnissiah almighty!" Tuul swore as he spoke to the ship, "Keep together girl. Come on then, keep together for me. You've lasted this long, just go a bit longer girl."

The machine spirit of the _Endless Bounty_ was tenacious. She would likely keep on going long after all the rest of her crew were just ashes in space, but Tull was in no hurry to be those ashes. He righted himself on the ladder, climbing his way down to the ship's warp engines. It was not until the soles of his feet echoed on the floor with a satisfying _click _of magnetic soles on deck plates that he let go of the ladder.

It would slow his strides considerably, but maintaining a veneer of calm and poise during a crisis situation would calm his Enginseers. After all, if their Magos was calm and composed, then there was nothing to worry about. Perhaps that explained Kerrigan's poise and gracefulness; it was a practiced veneer of calm. It was too much to consider right now, he reminded himself. He would compare the variables when the ship wasn't in mortal peril.

It was a problem with having as spacious and quick-acting of an augmentic brain as he had. The enhanced cogitators and memory engrams within his mind left him prone to bouts of manic thinking and sidetracked trails of logic. If he had time later he would implant a second augmentic brain attached to his first one, so that he could allow himself to continue two trains of thought at once, perhaps even three. Though perhaps that would be no less distracting – still worth a try, though.

He winced in pain as the ship bucked again. His legs, attached firmly to the floor, yanked hard where bone met augmentic. Glad that he could silence his vox caster, Tuul howled in silent pain within his head as nerves stretched and pinched from the strain. Vestigial remnants of ear ducts watering behind his optics, Tuul walked down into the tiny room that sat on top of the Warp engines.

_Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot - _he forced his legs to continue past the pain. The pain of the flesh was fleeting, and hardly worth his time. Any organic matter that was too damaged to be repaired could always be replaced. The flesh was weak, the machine was strong.

He continued down the unmarked corridor ten paces before reaching a translucent barrier of purple energy: a void shield. Tuul irritatedly typed the access runes to deactivate the barrier before walking through. With a hiss of crackling ozone, Tuul idly realized that walking even a second slower would have severed a mechandrite. He would have to remember to recalibrate that; it was an unrealistic entry time.

Then again, there was no hurry to have Enginseers in this particular room. The hyperspace engines were too dangerous and too critical to entrust in the hands of anyone less qualified than a Magos. Not that it stopped the Navigators from poking their noses into where they did not belong.

"Speak of the devil," Tuul muttered to himself before activating his voice box, "Navigator Calven, this is not a safe place to be right now. I need you to return to your designated safe zone until the battle is over."

"Magos Tuul. If I am not safe standing on top of the ship's Warp-engines, then precisely where _am _I safe?" The skeletally thin Navigator queried as he ran his fingers over the ornate machinery of the machine.

Tuul didn't really have an answer to that. Any weapon powerful enough to breach the bulkheads and additional void-shields around the warp-engine was strong enough to destroy the ship outright. "I still have to ask you to leave, Navigator. I cannot be liable for your safety."

"Magos, it is precisely because of the danger to all of us that I come to you now. It is the only time that I can be positive that we will not be interrupted." The Navigator's voice lacked its usual haughtiness, sounding lost more than arrogantly superior. "What I tell you can only be said in secret."

"You've got five minutes Navigator," Tuul sighed as he approached the hyperspace engines to plug in his handheld cogitator, "That's how long it will take to download the data core. I can't spare more than that without putting the ship at risk."

"Time," The Navigator snorted in amusement, pulling out his snuff box before stowing it back in his pocket as though having reconsidered it. "That is the issue, isn't it?"

"Four minutes fifty five seconds," Tuul examined the power to weight ratio of the hyperspace mass exchange, trying to figure out if there was a way to improve the real-space to hyperspace conversion.

"Magos, our orders are secretive by design. For the good of humanity we keep certain knowledge secret, for fear of the harm that might be done were it to be given to the wrong people. We guard our knowledge jealously, so that it cannot be used against us. But some knowledge is too dangerous to be kept, and some secrets are not worth the price we pay," the Navigator wrung his hands fearfully, "Some answers come to light no matter what we do."

Tuul looked up from his cogitator. The houses of Navigators were obsessive in their secrecy, second only to the Ordos Malleus of the Inquisition in their secret knowledge of warp-craft. They were sorcerers well-versed in a craft that none save their carefully honed blood lines could master.

Navigator Calven rubbed his hands together nervously. "Navigator Illrich does not believe that this should become common knowledge. I disagree. However, he has forbidden me from revealing it to anyone oath bound to the Inquisitor or Sáclair."

"Then why even bother –" Tuul shook his head in surprise as it hit him, "Omnisisah above, I'm not actually bound to either of them, am I? My pledge of loyalty is to Kerrigan, who is no longer bound to Sáclair and was never bound to Hilder."

"A technicality, but not a breach of my oath." The Navigator nodded. "For my safety, however, I will request an oath of secrecy from you to never reveal my part in this."

"You have it," Tuul nodded.

"Magos, tell me. What do you know of the potential chronological side effects of warp travel? Time travel, if you prefer."

Tuul held up his finger in a gesture for quiet and activated his long-range communicator, "Enginseer Sven, I need you to oversee repairs for the foreseeable future. I've encountered an unusual fluctuation in the Hyperspace engines that I will need to see to personally."

He looked up at Calven, "Congratulations Navigator. You have my undivided attention."

* * *

It was official. Once this report hit the air Tonya was going to win every damn award for journalism the Earth Alliance could give. She was going to boost the network ratings by twenty points just by being able to show an interview with the Inquisitor. Live footage of Imperial soldiers engaging in active warfare? Forget about it.

It was difficult to martian the proper decorum and dignity that was expected from a war reporter when she was just so giddy about the opportunity that was sitting in front of her on a silver platter.

Her producer was going to have a heart attack when she sent him this footage. She could taste an anchorwoman job just around the bend. At this point the disgraced Earthforce Commander Ivanova was just the icing on the cake.

The body armor the Imperials had insisted she wear was horribly uncomfortable, but Inquisitor Hilder had eyed her civilian issue flak armor once before sniffing in disgust and pulling a chest plate emblazoned with the double-headed eagle of the Imperium out a cargo container.

"If you're going to go into battle unarmed, at least have the common sense to not go unarmored," he'd grumbled contemptuously.

He did not, she noticed, force a similar armored vest upon their guide V'cath. The hoary goat-man was left more or less to his own devices with the avian Kroot Hunter. The two aliens seemed content to just stare at each other with their unnerving yellow eyes, growling and braying territorially.

The deliciously handsome Colonel Danzig had helped her put the armor on, flashing her a haggard but handsome smile and saying a couple of heart-meltingly flirtatious words in the Imperial language. If the two of them survived this battle, she planned to see if he was just as tan beneath the crimson silk robes. She smiled wickedly to herself; it didn't seem like the Colonel would take much convincing if she had the opportunity.

OK, it was a glib thing to be thinking about before going into a warzone, but after the fifteenth or twentieth one you went to it got sort of hard to be serious any more. Yes, they were driving through the endless ash wastes of Matok, and yes they were heading for almost certain death in the jaws of the half-breed war machine, but _damn _was this going to make a great story.

Figuring that it was best to stick with the English-speaking portion of the people in the transport, Tonya smiled and spoke to the Inquisitor. "Inquisitor Hilder, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to speak with you."

"You were determined to reach the front lines. I had space in my Chimera. It seemed an adequate exchange," the Inquisitor paid mild attention to her as he pulled out a black stone box and set it in the middle of the transport. Pressing a button in its center, he activated a holographic overlay of the battlefields. It was a splotchy and irregular map, but it vaguely showed the position of the Imperial forces as they weaved their way towards the rebel fortress.

"_Exploratoribus marunong ügyesen_," The swarthy Colonel pointed to a column of the bipedal imperial walkers. He tapped the lead walker and the hologram shimmered, shifting to a first-person view from the perspective of the walker.

A hundred miles of trenches stretched out into the distance, carrion piles of Sh'lassen corpses shoved into whatever gaps could not be filled with sandbags. The vague profiles of several alien war machines poked out from concealed positions and camouflaged netting, pointing angular weapons she vaguely remembered from history vids.

"Dilgar suppression tanks," Commander Ivanova's brow rose in abject shock, "Where in the hell did they get those? I've never seen one outside of a museum."

"Not just the tanks," brayed V'clath as he scratched a rough bit of skin behind his horns, "Cat-men too. Nasty as the half-breeds, twice as mean."

"But they're dead!" Tonya asserted in confusion. A whole race did not just walk away from a supernova. "The entire system is a black hole."

"Dilgar?" Queried the bird like Kroot warrior in a crooningly hopeful tone. "Tell Vira'capac man thing, what is Dilgar?"

"They're a feline predatory species, and tried to conquer the galaxy thirty years ago. But they're extinct. They all died when their sun went supernova." The Commander shook her head incredulously, "But that thing looks like it just rolled out from the factory."

The goat man hawed in amusement, "Give up on impossible. Impossible stopped when demons came to Akdor. Now there is only possible and true."

"Let's see how well these ghost tanks stand up to Imperial weaponry." The Inquisitor grunted irritatedly before tapping the side of his golden skull-like helmet to its hidden transponder, "_Ignem in di mae Panzer._"

A brilliant lance of laser fire shot out from the muzzle of the walker's gun. With a thunderous burst of exploding munition the Dilgar war machine ceased to be. Small arms laser fire cracked across the expanse of the dunes, scourging the area around the walker till a missile whistled its way across. The camera blurred as the driver hurriedly repositioned his vehicle, trying to avoid the explosive round.

The image disappeared as the interference grew to be too much for the holographic interface to keep up with. A man in yellow and black heraldry yelled into his microphone agitatedly, "_Ioannem? Estis vos lebendig? Estis vos lebendig? Ioannem!_"

"Likey dead," Hemmed the Sh'lassen with goatish irritation. "Radio only gives away our position. Foolish."

"Our communications channels are highly scrambled," the Inquisitor replied tersely, "That is highly unlikely."

"Best not to rely on what is likely," The goat-man jutted out his lower jaw pensively clicking his teeth together, chewing on a bit of cud stored in his cheek, "Usually disappointing."

The Kroot whistled in agreement, "Why not have more clever goat things with Vira'capac? Only stupid pink man things thinking foolish thoughts."

A pregnant moment passed as the tank rumbled forwards before a timid and tired voice of the walker commander replied, "_Ja. Ich is libendig. Si plures que wir dachten._"

"Of course there are more of them than we planned. At least they took no casualties," sighed Commander Ivanova before replying into her own headset in flawless Gothic, "_Deus Rex Imperator shültz."_

"You've learned the Imperial language already?" Tonya asked in astonishment. The Earthforce linguistics department was only now beginning to understand the thousand dialects of the insanely complicated Imperial language. It was being described jokingly as "Esperanto as designed by Satan" due to its billions of homonym words without any visible standards of either grammar or conjugation.

"She wouldn't be a particularly useful apprentice if she couldn't understand the language," the Inquisitor replied as he examined an ornate pistol strapped to the wrist of his mechanical arm. It glowed slightly with the discharge of ambient energy.

"It's why he kidnapped me. I accidentally looked into his mind," Susan growled in a voice of deadpan calm. "I know too much."

"Must you continue to bring that up?" the Inquisitor sighed in a tone of irritated repetition. "This is going to be a tedious apprenticeship if every conversation we have is going to revolve around how I recruited you."

"Recruited me?" the Commander screeched, "You drugged me, stripped me naked, pierced my nipples and about ten other places I didn't even know _could _be pierced, broke my arms and legs, then carried me to your ship in a sack! How in the hell was that a recruitment?"

"Impressed into service, if you prefer. It was a far sight kinder than what your Psi-corps does to those with unique talents. The refugees that the ship's sanctioned psykers have begun training were tortured in ways that would shame the Arch-confessor Kyrnov." The Inquisitor shuddered visibly, "What sort of sociopath puts a twelve year old girl in a forced breeding program?"

So many questions were bouncing around Tonya's head she could hardly string them together. The Commander had been kidnapped? The Psi-corps had a secret underage breeding program? Hell she hardly needed to ask any questions, the Imperials were so alarmingly open with information. Say what you would about the Imperium of Man, but they took freedom of information to a whole new level.

"Probably the same sort of sociopaths that butcher dozens of women to heal their dead friend," Susan shuddered in disgust. "The Imperium doesn't have a monopoly on morality."

"Rik no bad," Growled Danzig in an irritated patois, "Sick in head. Not fault. Drugs wrong for head."

"Yes, the actions of Brother Helit were tragic but unavoidable considering the unstable and often hallucinogenic effects of improper anti-agapic use," The Inquisitor sighed morosely, "If we'd only known, we might have helped him."

Anti-agapic. Now that was a word Tonya knew. The war criminal Deathwalker had shown up on Babylon 5 one year prior, claiming to have discovered the ultimate anti-agapic. A drug to cure all disease and stop all aging, "I'm sorry Inquisitor, but did I hear you correctly: the Imperium has access to anti-agapic technology?"

"Yes, we can extend our lives by hundreds, sometimes thousands of years with regular treatments," the Inquisitor waved of the question disinterestedly as he looked at his chronometer. "_Pervenimus erreichen ad terminum fünf Minuten. Deus Rex Imperator shültz!_"

"_Deus Rex Imperator shültz!_" replied the collected Imperials in the transport. Tonya repeated the phrase, not wanting to feel left out. Judging by the approving nod from the Inquisitor, it had been the correct choice.

However, when the Colonel spoke into his communicator it was not in the alien tones of High Gothic. He spoke but an altogether more familiar and astonishing language: "OK, men, we're moving into the battlefield. No slip ups. I want this by the book. We all go in and we all come home. For Sáclair and the Empire, God willing!"

"You speak Arabic?" Tonya asked in confusion. "Why the heck would you learn to speak Arabic?" She realized a moment later that she'd asked in Arabic when many of the Imperial soldiers looked up at her in shocked surprise.

Colonel Danzig looked at her as though his pet cat had just burst into song before slack-jawedly saying, "You... you speak the ancient words of my ancestors? The words of the Damascans long past?"

Tonya realized that nine highly-armed people were all looking at her with varying levels of awe and horror. She might as well have taken off her clothes for all the fuss it caused. She looked at Susan, "It's just Arabic. What's the big deal?"

"The 'big deal,' Miss Wallace," said the Inquisitor in a voice of near-reverent calm. "is that we now know unequivocally that your people come from a common history to our own. There can be no doubt."

"Not to mention that it pretty much shoots ten thousand years of Lionheart military tradition of speaking in Arabic as a secret language to hell and back," Susan sighed. "Sorry, Danzig. I wish I'd realized it sooner."

"Is not your faults," Danzig replied in English before waggling his eyebrows at Tonya and speaking in Arabic, "_And at worst you and I will get to know each other better once this is over. I do not need to speak your language to read your body._"

Tonya felt red creeping into her face as the tank slowed to a halt, the harsh crack of ozone echoing in time with the deep booming bursts of explosive projectiles fired by their chimera transport.

"Stick close to me," the Colonel whispered, "and you might survive to see tomorrow."

It was only as she followed her companions out the back of their tank and into the open air that Tonya really began to appreciate the gravity of what she'd signed on for. When the Inquisitor said that he intended to "spearhead" the assault on the half-breed troops, he meant it literally rather than figuratively.

She ducked in terror as an explosive round collided with their transport, gutting it and annihilating the spot where she'd been sitting not ten seconds prior. A razor sharp bit of shrapnel whizzed past her face, slicing her earlobe painfully. Her yelp of pain was silenced by Danzig clapping her breathing mask over her face with a barked command of, "Silence, woman, or they'll hear you."

The Imperial troops advanced down into the trenches, silently slinking along the trenches as their transports rumbled along the open battlefield. The massive cyborg grabbed her by the nape of the neck and carried her into the trench bodily when she couldn't convince her legs to move forward out of fear. Dear God, why had she thought this was going to be a good idea?

She followed Commander Ivanova as the woman worked her way through the three inch-deep layer of black sludge, only barely able to stand the constant smell of methane from the geysers erupting all around them. Her camera, painted black so as not to give away their position, hovered unhelpfully above her as it filmed her humiliating trudge through the mire.

The massive cyborg loomed over her, propelling itself forward with its mechanical tentacles inches above her body. She resented its presence until the first shell burst next to the trench, shrapnel and burning napalm flying in all directions. The igneous projectiles reflected off of some sort of personal energy field, protecting her from injury or death.

She stuck closer to the cyborg after that, not giving the remotest shit how bad the cyborg smelled or how hideous it was. As long as she got to live, it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

The Imperial paused briefly at an intersection, waiting patiently. One minute, then two, then three, and on and on they waited. At ten minutes of silently crouching in a trench and listening to gunfire Tonya was about ready to scream when a howling screech of incoming artillery drowned out anything she might have said. She scrunched her eyes closed and huddled beneath the Cyborg, clutching his chest for protection as Armageddon crashed to the ground before her.

Her hands shook with horror, but she'd managed not to soil herself as the cyborg gently pried her away from him and urged her forward and into the charnel house. What had once been bodies of the oversized half-breed creatures and Dilgar lay mulched in the remnants of destroyed bunkers.

"Clear!" Cried Danzig as he poked his head into the now exposed tunnels, "No, wait-" He fired his rifle twice, "-Clear. Eagle 1 is burrowing. All teams advance into the breach on my mark."

He looked to the Inquisitor, who nodded once in the affirmative, "Mark."

The Imperial soldiers dived into the remains of the ruined bunker, guns at the ready and eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary. Tonya noted that the red-robed men speaking Arabic and the men sporting black and yellow heraldry of the Inquisitor seemed to take a drastically different attitude to warfare. Where the swarthy men were gung-ho and devil may care, the masked men were more cautious, more calculating. Perhaps it was a product of their service to the Inquisitor, as Hilder was an apparently cautious man.

As Susan Ivanova helped Tonya down into the rubble of the bunker the reporter could not help but wonder if it would have been wiser to heed General Franklin's advice just to stay behind. The press tent hadn't really been that bad, had it?

"Jesus, Hilder," Susan exclaimed in shock, as she stared at the severed head of a truly massive creature, "What the hell was that?"

"I'm unsure," The Inquisitor prodded the elephantine face with the blade of his sword, opening the creature's eyelid to examine its irises. "Every gene stock produces different half-breed creatures. I can only speculate as to how the half-breeds would be affected by generations of being in your space."

"Generations?" Tonya asked in horror.

"It would have to be at least long enough to rescue an invasion force worth of Dilgar from their home world. How long would that have been?" the Inquisitor looked at Susan expectantly.

"A year, give or take. Probably longer," Susan sighed in irritation. "The Incubation period for a thousand of these things is a month isn't it?"

"A week," replied the Inquisitor calmly. "Sgt. Hamman, if you would be so kind?"

A sallow cheeked man with a recently healed scar across his face smiled eagerly as he thumbed the activator to his flamethrower and fired down the passageway ahead. An inhuman howl echoed from the depths as something many-limbed and canine scrambled away into the darkness.

The Inquisitor smiled eagerly as he activated the power switch on his broadsword, lighting coruscating across it's blade, "Weapons free. If it moves, kill it."

* * *

G'Kar bellowed in frustration as he watched a Narn solder get ripped in half by the monstrous half-breed apes through his binoculars. The creature howled in ecstasy as it shoved hunks of meat into its discontentedly fanged maw, writhing it tentacles in pleasure only to screech in pain as a Centauri commando drove a Centauri gladius into the creature's skull.

"I don't care how you get them to the third ridge, but we need more men down there. Those things are going to overrun them soon," barked the Centauri General into his communicator from where he stood some ten paces behind G'Kar in his command tent. "No I do not want you to shell the Narn position. I want you to send commandoes to support it."

General Ezra was, as Centauri went, an utter and unmitigated son of a bitch. He was cold hearted, calculating, and racist to a fault, but the man both understood warfare and outright refused to allow himself to misuse allied forces. When war eventually did break out between their peoples, G'Kar would have to make a special effort to have the man assassinated for fear that the man might turn that competence to victory against the Narn.

He flattered himself that the General shared similar feelings about G'Kar. They were adversaries, to be sure, but united in purpose against the monsters of Faust. Ezra did not believe in the teachings of G'Quan. Nor did he belive that G'Kar was correct in his assertions that these creatures were servants of the ancient enemy of the Narn people. Yet belief was unnecessary.

Ezra hated the half-breed creatures of Faust on principle. They were esthetically appalling and they seemed entirely determined to eat as many Centauri as they could manage. Which, on reflection, was as good a reason as any.

"Jak," The General questioned their Imperial military advisor, "Precisely how do you suggest breaking this stalemate? I cannot advance without exposing the eastern front to Dilgar scout tanks."

The damn things were a nightmare. They weren't so much tanks as high-calibre rifles and anti-armor guns slapped into motor-bikes, and they had a level of mobility along the trenches that was hard to manage with their more cumbersome Centauri and Narn counterparts.

"Do... do you have m... mobile anti-aircraft weapons?" Jak considered the problem.

"No," The Centauri general sighed irritatedly, "They're all plasma-based. We can't bring them into the eastern trenches with so much methane in the air. We could try another air strike, but we lost two fighers out of the last ten we sent on environmental hazards alone."

"We have some shoulder mounted missiles that could work," G'Kar sighed, "But they're not going to work at this range. We'd have to get them substantially closer to work."

"How do you dig them out in the Empire?" Queried the General.

"N... not usually the j... job of rank and file solders. C... common practice is to nuke the population center from orbit or drop asteroids on the continent." Jak shrugged his shoulders. "I... Impractical in our current situation due to environmental complications."

"You use mass drivers on your own populations?" G'Kar felt queasy at the thought of it. Mass driver weaponry was banned by every single civilized species in the known universe. Even the Centauri were signatories on that treaty.

"If necessary," Jak nodded, twitching slightly in thought. "Every situation different. M... measured r...response for measured attack. Surrender of Imperial territory is an inadequate solution. Negotiation with terrorists is a non-viable solution. Eventually destruction of t...territory preferable to surrender. Numerous planets overpopulated anyway."

G'Kar was about to reply when a Centauri soldier screamed from inside the camp, howling as tentacles burst out of the black ash and dragged him down into a hidden tunnel below. The soldier howled inhumanly as five hulking shapes dragged themselves out of the sapper's tunnel.

G'Kar grabbed the phased plasma-rifle off the table and fired twice into the largest creature's head. A wave of blue energy mulched the bony mottled flesh, bursting it with a satisfying squelch of cooked meat. The remaining four ducked into cover and opened fire, their laser rifles cracking loudly with the sound of ozone.

A Narn warrior growled hatefully, chucking a fragmentation grenade across the ground to explode a the feet of a half-breed warrior. The warped creature was kicked up into the air as its legs ceased to connect with the rest of its body. It was not long before an uninjured half-breed lost control of its hunger and ceased firing to start tearing off meaty hunks of the injured creature's legs.

The two half breeds rolled across the ground, stabbing each other with their barbed tentacles, before the Narn tossed a second grenade, ending their squabbling forever.

Surprisingly, it was Jak who killed the next half breed, shooting it with a slug thrower in the chest. The creature had actually laughed at the diminutive clerk before the shell in its chest exploded, putting a watermelon-sized hole in the monster's innards.

The final half-breed tried to flee back down the tunnel they'd dug, but tumbled to the ground dead when a Centauri soldier hit it in the shoulder blades with a high-powered laser rifle, the sort the Centauri favored for anti-tank weaponry. It didn't kill the half-breed so much as liquify it.

G'Kar tossed a plasma grenade into the warren to collapse the burrow before activating his communicator, "This is a general warning to all troops. I repeat, general warning to all troops. The creatures can burrow through the ground. Attacks may come from below!"

The General growled in irritation and slammed his helmet firmly across his head, tossing the feather back over it imperiously, "Monstrous, cowardly beasts. They have no sense of gentlemanly warfare."

"Sound the general advance," G'Kar growled in irritation. "We need to get this command post to more secure ground as soon as possible. If we can't make the ten miles to the forward bunker we're going to have to be fighting the damn tunnel Tujula all night."

"T... tunnel Tujula?" Jak Queried.

"They're an animal that lives on Na – That's not important right now," G'Kar pointed with his gauntleted fist at a stone fortress sitting on top of a distant ridge. "We need to take that fortress, or by G'Quan we will die here."

"I'm inclined to agree," The General growled in irritation, "All troops, plan delta G. Advance on my mark."

* * *

Susan watched as the Inquisitor examined the battlefield from safely below the trenches, a long optic extending from his eye up and over the rim of the trench, "Faust has not breached the main wall."

"That's good isn't it?" Queried Danzig as he rubbed the soot from his eyes. "It means we're not too late."

"Oh, we're late," Daul growled in irritation. "Late enough that they should have some more noteworthy siege equipment in place. They don't have anything more apparently dangerous than a Leman Russ. I mean, just look at those doors. Faust is mad but he's no fool. I wouldn't have shown up here with anything less than a Baneblade and a couple of Basilisks."

"We didn't have those on Belzafest," Shem whispered. "And the best siege equipment we did have, we took with us."

Daul shook his head. "Faust has had a year or more to prepare for this assault. He has something planned to take down those doors. The question is, what is it?"

"Maybe he doesn't want them taken down," Susan suggested, taking care to speak in English for the reporter's benefit. "If he needs a new base of operations, it's hard to be more impregnable than Matok. He could be trying to starve them out. Like you said, the man is exceedingly patient."

It felt a bit bad to be using the reporter the way she was. There was no way that even a quarter of this footage would hit open airtime thanks to the National Secrets Act, but it would prove her with a firm foothold to bring herself back over to their good graces. As long as they saw her as their double agent rather than as a traitor, it would go a long way towards helping her case.

But her case for what, precisely? She had no interest in becoming part of the Psi-corps, and her career in the Earthforce military was for all intents and purposes kaput. Daul had seen to that. He didn't think that she knew, but she knew the way that his mind worked too well for that to fool her. She understood Daul Hilder better than the man understood himself.

She was thinking his thoughts less often, but she knew how to visualize them if she needed to. It was a bit like having her own sociopath on demand. Which was, of course, how she realized that Daul did not have even the remotest clue what a reporter was. The Empire had no forms of standardized mass media that weren't strictly controlled by both the offices of propaganda and the church of the Emperor.

She looked into the camera as she said, "The man has been alive for centuries already."

"Faust prefers a more direct hand in things," Daul countered, rubbing the jaw bone of his helmet pensively. "No, we need to reconsider how we're advancing. Danzig!"

"Yessir!" the Lionheart replied eagerly.

"I need you to take the Lionhearts as we planned before. Approach them from the side and drive them into the artillery. I'm taking a different route. We're going to try and approach them from that path– " Danzig pointed to a narrow tunnel that went vaguely in the direction of the front lines. " – with Miss Ivanova and my retinue and look for summoning circles. If he's not going to use super-heavies, then the bastards are planning to use demons. So far, the invasion is proceeding to schedule and I won't have us slowing it down."

"Of course, sir," Danzig nodded affirmatively, looking to Miss Wallace nervously as the woman strained to listen in on the Gothic discussion, "Sir, perhaps she isn't...?"

"Yes, Danzig, the noblewoman should go with you," Daul shuddered, clasping and unclasping his prosthetic hand. "I do not mean to inflict what I must do upon the woman. Take her with you. It will be a kinder thing by far. I'll relay their positions so that you can pass the information back to the line and carpet bomb the area."

A shiver ran up Susan's spine that was more than anticipation - a premonition, perhaps? Daul was not particularly skilled in the art of premonition, but Susan had always had a preternatural sense of when things were going to go completely wrong. She'd always written it off to Russian stoicism, but perhaps it had been something more.

It was with a heavy heart that she followed Daul and his Skitarii shadow, falling into step with Lieutenant Shan and the honor guard of Belzafesters. The lanky Kroot loped behind them, eying the departing Lionhearts and Belzafesters.

Vira'capac trilled morosely, clucking and shaking his quills in irritation. "Irritating man-things. They will be missed."

Daul paid the Kroot no attention at all as they slunk forwards into the pitch-black of the subterranean passage. But Susan could not help but feel a deep and presiding sense of foreboding about the whole situation.

* * *

Li whooped eagerly as the shot from his aft laser cannon bisected an unwary Dilgar frigate. They might be upgraded with God alone knew what alien technologies, but the Dilgar were the same predictable predators as ever. They never fought a man one-on-one who could be battled two-on-one, and always chose a wounded opponent over a strong one.

Presumably, whatever race was responsible for the pitch-black bio-ships that lead their attack fleet had taken pity upon the Dilgar. How a fleet of Dilgar ships had managed to escape destruction hardly mattered. They were there, and they would be defeated.

The rebel fleet had already surrendered, and the so called "thousand ship demon fleet" of Dilgar and Bio-ships was slowly being whittled down to a mere dozen escorts and three kilometer long bio-dreadnaughts.

Their ECM was unquestionably impressive, perhaps even equal to that of the Minbari, but the Earth Alliance had beaten a race with powerful electronic countermeasures at the Battle of the Line. Plain human stubbornness had defeated the most technologically sophisticated race in the universe.

And there was no human more stubborn than Li. There was no crew better than the crew of the _Beijing Beauty_. And he'd fight anyone who disputed either.

"Manually aim the guns if you have to, but do not allow those damnable Imperials to have all the glory," Li growled in irritation. The Earth Alliance had already been winning the battle by a wide margin before the aliens had shown up. It would be humans, not aliens or Imperials, who brought about this victory.

Li could not argue that the Narn and Centauri ships had not been helpful - necessary even - in ensuring that as few humans died as possible, but his pride would not allow him to even acknowledge the remotest scrap of the victory being due to the barbarians of the Imperium. To be sure, the demon fleet had hunted the _Endless Bounty_ with a near-religious fervor, at times ignoring otherwise crippled or practical targets in lieu of firing at the Imperial ship.

But the _Endless Bounty_ was not necessary. Not at all. Well, perhaps to draw fire away from himself. The upgraded Dilgar ships packed a hell of a wallop.

The _Beijing Beauty_ banked hard to port to avoid a missile salvo from one of the kilometer-long bio-ships, yanking Li to the left within his harness as an enemy missile collided with the _Beijing Beauty_. A pair of startled Ensigns hovered weightlessly in the air as the ship's artificial gravity abruptly ceased to function due to severe damage in the ship's rotational section.

Li, still strapped down to the ground, grabbed them by their ankles and pulled them down.

"Permission to return fire?" Queried his weapons officer.

"Permission granted. ECM or no, It's a kilometer long target next to two other kilometer long targets, you're bound to hit one of the 死屁眼! Fire!" Li bellowed in irritation. The bio-ships troubled him: they were at least superficially reminiscent to Vorlon ships, though the jutting spines on the oblong black flesh of the ship were like no Vorlon ship he'd ever seen. Too much of this battle was unknown and unplanned.

Pulsed plasma fire rocketed across the vast expanse of debris and burning ships to collide harmlessly across the glowing energy fields surrounding the ships. The damned things were shielded, heavily so. "This is an order to all Earth Alliance ships! Fire all batteries at Hostile Omega 3, full power. The hostile is shielded. I repeat the hostile is shielded."

Lieutenant Meyer pulled himself down into his seat, fastening the buckles hurriedly, "Captain, don't underestimate them. We're taking around one-to-one losses, even with the aid of the aliens."

"Sir!" A worried Ensign shouted, "Port interceptors are non-functioning! Our Y axis is vulnerable from below. We have incoming fighters. I repeat, we have incoming starfighters."

"Where the hell are our Starfuries?" Li barked in irritation.

"Protecting the _London _and the _King _while they attempt to activate their engines sir." Meyer sighed. "Like I told you when you advanced past our defensive line."

"Don't tell me what I already know, tell me how we fix it." Li snarled as the sound of something impacting with the side of his ship clanged through the hull. "Damage report."

"Superficial, sir. Re-routing power to grid g-42 aft to compensate." the Ensign replied nervously, "The fighters managed to keep the worst of them off us. But we shouldn't stay here longer than we have to."

"I thought you said the fighters were back with our crippled ships?" Li chastised his second in command irritatedly.

"Ours most certainly are," Klaus pointed at the eagle winged fighters swooping past the narrow viewport of the bridge, "Those are Imperial fighter craft."

"Saved by Imperials," Li spat in irritation. "Fine, slow the impulse engines twenty percent and allow the fleet to catch up with us."

"Sir, there are two Narn warships coming into formation with us, the _Ga'la _and the _Anok'kor_. They say they're planning to protect us till our interceptors are back online," the comms officer announced.

"Good," Li replied, "Keep hitting them with our forward batteries, switch to full spectrum pulses. And get that fool of an engineer linked up to see what in the devil is going on with those repairs. I don't want to be hiding behind the Narn's skirts forever."

"I can't figure out what it is they're doing," Lieutenant Meyer chewed his lip nervously.

"Mr. Meyer?" Li turned to his second in command.

"Sir, none of this sits right with me. It's too easy," Klaus sighed. "I've never know the Dilgar to launch an assault that they weren't positive they could win. Our arrival was entirely predictable. The Earth Alliance was bound to send troops to Akdor even before they decided to invade, so why do it now? What do they hope to gain?"

"The Dilgar are not the puppet masters here, Mr. Meyer," Li nodded towards the black ships in the distance. "Those ships, whoever they are, are the ones supplying and supporting them."

"But what do they have to gain in invading a little scrap of nowhere that has barely achieved spaceflight? The only reason that we bother to be here is its tactical importance with relation to the Narn and Centauri home worlds." Klaus shook his head, "This isn't an occupation force, or they would have issued some sort of demands or negotiations. There just isn't a reason."

"It might not be a reason you or I could comprehend," Li grunted. "Sentient beings value different things. We fight for different reasons." However, it sounded hollow even to him that they would invade without some sort of greater purpose.

"Ensign," Li commanded abruptly. "Put the battlefield on the main view screen."

Li groaned in frustration as he looked at the friendly warship indicators, realizing their mistake. The Dilgar ships had flown in different directions to weaken the relief fleet's advance, spreading them to the northernmost and southernmost poles of the planet.

Li pointed to the second moon. "I want an enhanced scan of that moon. Immediately."

"Scanning, sir," the Ensign stared at her console in confusion, "Uh, just a second, sir. I need to recalibrate my instruments. I'm getting some odd results."

"How odd?" Li asked nervously.

"Well, sir, there are a lot of odd radioactive elements present, but I'm having difficulty registering that the moon is there at all," the Ensign replied in confusion. "I mean... it's a moon, so I know it's there, but it's showing up as being in more than one place at once – if that makes any sense."

Li swore furiously, "It's an ambush."

"What?" Klaus blinked in shock. "But how? We control the hyperspace gate."

"Klaus, hyperspace is no longer the only method of faster than light travel," Li replied in horror as a dozen kilometer long dagger-like ships soared out from behind the moon, skating on starlight around a monstrous warship with three massive pinioned wings of solar webbing. "Prepare to engage targets. Sent out a warning to all allied ships. And get me a firing solution, now!"

The dagger ships were elegant. They didn't seem to fly so much as they danced through the stars in a cascade of shifting shapes and shadow. The ships shifted abruptly every time Li tried to fix his eyes on one, blinking out of view and into a different location entirely. It was like grasping at smoke.

It was beautiful in a nightmarish way. An old race, it had to be an old race like the Vorlons. But why involve themselves here? Why now?

"_Mein Gott_," Klaus' jaw opened and closed in astonishment at the pure and predatory elegance of their attackers. "What are they?"

"We're getting a message, sir." The comms officer cupped his hand over his ear. "Uh – I'm not making this up sir – You do not belong."

"That's it?" Li questioned, raising his voice to speak over the gunnery crew as they attempted to target the new threat.

"No sir." Replied the officer. "Leave or die."

"They don't seem to be waiting for an answer, sir!" The tactical officer shouted. "They're launching fighters. And – how in the hell did they – Incoming!"

A blank patch of space some hundred kilometers above where their sensors registered the presence of a warship fired upon the Narn warship to their left, a beam of blinding white bisecting the ship down the middle. Not waiting for Li's order, their helmsman punched the engines to full speed, narrowly avoiding the nuclear fireball when the beam of light hit the Narn reactor core.

"Sir! Our sensors just detected that we've been targeted." The tactical officer shouted in horror. "I have no idea where they are sir! I have no firing solution."

"Evasive action," Li barked.

"To where?" Klaus growled. "We cannot match those speeds."

"Second contact!" The tactical officer shouted. "It's the _Endless Bount_y. They've engaged the hostile."

"They're transmitting a wide band radio transmission to all ships in the Region in Interlac." The comms officer turned to Li. "They say, 'We will not surrender an inch to these miserable, arrogant, knife-eared murderous pirates. For the Emperor, for Terra, we stand."

The excited chatter of his gunnery crew washed over Li as he pondered the new arrivals. The Imperials knewthem. Not just knew them, _hated_ them.

"Never thought I'd be glad to see that miserable ship," Li grunted. "At least _someone_ can target the bastards."

"Sir!" The tactical officer smiled. "I can't target the enemy ships but I can target the Imperial torpedoes. Shifting targeting priority to imperial ordinance impacts."

"Do it! And tell the Anok'kor that they can do the same," Li grunted. "And somebody get on the horn to tell Captain Anders to stop sitting on his thumbs on the southern rim. We need reinforcements _yesterday!"_

* * *

Osma felt underdressed for the battle in spite of his carapace armor. The need for an expedient investigation into Nor's "little matter," as he'd become fond of calling it, was so great that he'd left the coordination of security teams in the hands of Shakut rather than controlling them himself. He was, of course, in full battle armor and would respond to any and all invaders to the sovereign realm of the Lord Sáclair, but he could not afford to let even a second pass where the loyalty of Donat Enzo remained in question.

They kept on appearing in crime reports, odd examples of people having anti-agapics more sophisticated than they strictly ought to have had access to. Osma had never made the connection between the disparate crime reports, in part because the theft of medicine from the nobility was a rather victimless crime and in part because he rather pitied the crewmen who could not afford proper medical care.

It was not Bonafila that he directed his efforts towards at the moment, but a prior case that, due to the rapid expulsion of Magos Frist, had fallen by the wayside. The sabotage of the War Servitor was a seemingly unremarkable event. A week in which someone did not try to murder the Inquisitor was a slow week indeed. But the sophistication and the lateral thinking displayed by trying to poison a war servitor by restoring its mind to drive it insane was devious, even brilliant.

Were the war servitor to have murdered or maimed the Inquisitor, it likely would have been written off as a product of poor maintenance or an accidentally uttered command. In the _highly_ unlikely event that they managed to subdue a crazed war servitor without damaging the machine, it would have still been difficult to figure out exactly what had happened, as standard procedure in those events would have been to cut out the malfunctioning augmentics _first_. Any healing done by the drugs would have been concealed by the damage done to remove the augmentics.

But there were two men to enter that room. The first had administered the anti-agapic. The second had administered anti-venom in a misguided attempt to protect the Inquisitor's life. This told Osma that the first man not only knew the second, but knew them intimately. If he could find one, then it would be only a matter of time before he tracked down the other.

But after days of watching every damn security recording from one side of the cell block to the other, the most he'd managed to discover was that the ship's internal security monitors were pathetically easy to scramble due to general disrepair. Whoever had come to the brainwave that repairing security cameras in the detention levels was a low priority task needed a kick to the teeth.

He leaned back in his chair and swore in irritation, "Bloody milk and whore tit's of the eye."

A small voice yelped in shock at his anger. Osma swiveled in his chair to see the stocking footed Tariq. The child wore the smile linen smock with a tiny lion of Sáclair embroidered over the breast that Osma had given him for the last Primarch's feast. The boy shivered, afraid he'd done something to anger Osma.

Osma stood from his chair and lifted the boy into his arms, "No Tariq, I'm not mad at you. You're in no trouble. But why are you out of your bed? You have school tomorrow."

"No," Tariq lied, pouting sadly. "I don't. I can just stay up with you."

"Child, you know very well that isn't going to work." Osma grumbled, jiggling the child on his knee as he sat back down. "Now, why aren't you asleep?"

"I'm scared," Tariq kicked his legs back and forth as he tugged on Osma's braided beards. "You always fight, and I want to stay with you. I want to protect you."

"Oh, bless you child," Osma grumbled. "I'm an old man. My duty is to protect the ship, and that means going into danger sometimes. But I go there to protect you."

"You're my dad," Tariq said in a voice that only the ungracious would call a whine. "I need you."

"Child," Osma gesticulated with his left hand while searching for a way to make it all right in the boy's eyes, accidentally tapping an activation rune on the keypad. He swore and reached to undo what he'd done ,but not before Tariq yelled "I'll help!" and proceeded to smack every rune he could reach, pulling knobs and levers with great eagerness.

Osma yanked the child away from the keyboard, resisting the urge to scream at the boy as he gently placed the child on the ground and whispered in a dangerous rumble, "Child, never do that again. Ever. The wrong rune, the wrong lever, the wrong button and you could well condemn a man to death. If I _ever_ see you touch a cogitator rune without permission, I _will_ punish you severely."

Tariq groaned, rubbing his sleeves against his face and choking back the tears. Osma turned away from the boy and looked back at the screen, "Lets see what the damage is."

The files largely seemed to be intact; the cogitator's search window had been open so the worst Tariq had manage to do had been to open a work order from gold channel. How the eye had he done that? Gold channel work orders were supposed to be deleted immediately after being issued. It was an added security precaution enacted by Sáclair to prevent Amon Sui sabotage. The order could not be known or altered by any outside party once issued.

There were precious few with access to it. Other than the Captain and the Lady Sáclair, he could count them on one hand, all of them dangerously highly placed within the command structure of the _Endless Bounty_.

"Child... if this is what I believe it to be, I may very well take you to the sweet shop." Osma grumbled in frustrated approbation. He really shouldn't reward the child for something so grox-headedly foolish, but the boy had found the lead he could not. It was a _lead, _the first real one he'd found on the case so far. "Hell, I'm buying you that Commissar doll you wanted."

Tariq was going through so many confused emotions that he seemed on the edge of whiplash. "I... didn't... but... what?"

All he needed to do was cross reference the work order with who would have been on the bridge when Sáclair wasn't there on the day in question to figure out which of the potential – Osma stopped cold as a tinny screech of a klaxon interrupted his train of thought. A blue light spun, flashing a warning that he hoped never to see again in his lifetime. Pirates - Eldar pirates - had boarded the _Endless Bounty_. _Merciful Throne,_ where had they come from?

He punched the rune to save his findings to a data crystal and frenziedly shoved the crystal into the pocket of his tunic. Osma lifted the boy under one arm as he grabbed a combat shotgun and bandolier with the other.

"What's going on?" the baffled Tariq cried, "Where are we going?"

"Never you mind." Osma whispered in a voice that he hoped did not betray the terror in his heart. "It will all be well. It will all be well."

"No!" the boy yelled, "What's going on?"

"We're just having a drill. It's a game, boy, a special game." Osma ripped open the evidence safe in his office. He waved his arm to find the massive adamantium block, invisible to the naked eye when closed, which opened to expose a room the size of a walk-in closet. He sat the boy down on a shelf, pulling a confiscated breathing mask tagged with an evidence number and fixing it over the boy's face before attaching it to an oxygen apparatus. "You're going to sit in here and wait till I come back for you. I need you to stay absolutely _silent_ for this game. The other team doesn't play nice."

Tariq latched onto Osma's leg, "_No! _Don't go!"

"I have to go, child." Osma pried the boy off his leg and put him back onto the shelf. "I don't have a choice."

"If you go, you won't come back." Tariq's eyes were wet with tears, his words near-incomprehensible from the mask and the sobbing, "Nobody ever comes back. Not ever."

"Hey!" Osma pinched the boy's cheek, "Don't you talk like that. I'm coming back. Always."

"Promise?" The boy hiccuped, lifting the bottom of his shirt from over his belly to wipe his face.

"Of course I promise." Osma hugged the boy, "I'll definitely be back. We're family. Family always comes back."

The little boy hugged him as hard as his tiny arms could manage, pressing himself against Osma's chest as though if he just tried hard enough the bad things would go away. Sighing sadly, Osma ruffled the boy's hair and walked out of the evidence locker, shutting it behind him.

Hopefully he hadn't just lied to the boy.

"Come on then, you old goat," Osma grunted agitatedly to himself as he ran out of his office. "Let's show these knife-eared bastards why they should stay the _Eye_ off your blessed ship."

* * *

Daul twisted his fingers, manipulating the hatred into his mind into a bolt of energy as a half-breed warrior leapt from a second story window while brandishing an axe. The monster's innards sprayed across the bunker, venomous blood sizzling on contact with the obsidian. He hopped backwards to avoid the claws of a second beast, parrying its swipe with his power sword in a messy arc. The creature yowled as four sets of arms fell to the ground.

"Go other way, Vira'capac said." The Kroot warrior crooned irritatedly as it drove its elbow into a half-breed hound's gullet, "Obvious ambush, Vira'capac said. But no, man thing refuse to listen to Vira'capac. Mule-headed man thing must go _left_."

"We _get it,_" Shan growled in irritation, heaving a frag-grenade into the open window of the bunker, "Complaining won't make them die any faster."

The grenade exploded, tossing smoke and shrapnel within the confined space. The Belzafest Lieutenant nodded to the nearest of his men, motioning for the door. The unfortunate soldier charged through the door and into the waiting jaws of an injured but still living half-breed. Barbed tentacles perforated the man's chest, poking out from his back as the creature dislocated his jaw and swallowed his head.

Susan Ivanova screamed an irate "No!" before firing at the creature with her hot-shot las pistols. The masterwork weapons punched orange-sized holes in the half-breed's face and lungs, killing it instantly. A second Belzafest guardsman charged up to the hole, depressing the firing stud on his flamer and turning the inside of the bunker into a blazing inferno.

The half-breeds on the second floor tried to counter the assault, but Daul's Skitarii counterpart opened fire with his bolt-gun. Fist-sized explosive projectiles ripped across the side of the building, ignoring the stonework as though it were paper. Shell met flesh, and the half-breed creatures died.

"Cease fire!" Daul barked, reaching out with his senses to search for the presence of half-breeds, "They're dead."

"Another battle survived," the Kroot crowed in irritation. "Irritating."

Ignoring the preening alien's self-pity, Daul followed Cairn into the charred remains of the bunker, examining it in irritation. The remnants of what had once been maps and charts were only burned scraps beneath the charred corpses of half-breeds, "Damn! See if any of the intel survived the fire. We need to figure out what Faust is up to out here."

Shan poked at one of the bodies with the butt of his rifle, "This one isn't half-breed or Sh'lassen."

Susan examined the body, green in the face for having been exposed to so many charred corpses. The breathing mask would help, but nothing could truly silence that hateful odor. The Russian leaned over the body and squinted her eyes, as though trying to envision the uncooked flesh of the creature, "Yeah, that is definitely a Dilgar. Or was, I suppose."

V'clath sniffed the corpse, "It smells right for a Dilgar. Look at the mask, the grinning death insignia over a broken eagle. He's pledged to the half-breeds."

"Then the Dilgar are officially an enemy of the empire," Daul sighed. "Not that we're short for enemies."

The Skitarii's shoulders shook in amusement as he fidgeted with the shattered fragments of data crystals, scanning them with his auspex in the hope that one of them was stable enough to retain some data. His taloned fingers, too indelicate for such work, were crossed behind his back as his mechandrite cables did the more delicate adjustments.

Kicking an eviscerated half-breed from its perch with a wet thud, Daul sat down at the still-smoldering table and rested his elbows upon it in thought, "None of this makes any sense. Faust's strategy is clearly dependent upon both siege weaponry and reinforcement arriving imminently, but whoever he's placed in command of this legion has no way of obtaining either. Your Earth Alliance fleet has blockaded the hyperspace route. Travel to and from this place by the warp isn't even _possible_ for another four weeks, according to navigator Illirch. By now, any competent commander must see this. And we haven't even come _close_ to detecting an upswing in Warp energies on the battlefield, so he isn't summoning something around here."

"Very little about this war has made sense," V'Cath brayed morosely. "It could just be their comeuppance. They deserve it."

"I don't know," Susan sighed. "In the last days of the Dilgar Wars, they started ordering all sorts of irrational things intentionally. The idea was apparently to confuse us into searching for a strategy where there was none, in the hopes that we would act to counter an attack that was never coming. It was a way of getting us to waste resources on places they had no interest in."

"Perhaps," Shan hissed, "but the Half-breeds aren't especially prone to forward thinking. They have to believe that their commander has an immediately practical plan, or they're prone to eating them whole."

Daul chuckled, "Faust seems to think of it as _aggressive motivation_ for his commanders to be visibly competent at their jobs."

"Sir!" A terrified voice from the second floor yelled down the stairs. "I found something you should see."

Grunting with irritation as he stood up, Daul walked up the uneven stone steps to the second floor, tossing a half-breed corpse out a window with a telekinetic burst along the way. It was an unnecessary showy way of clearing it off the stairs, but he needed to burn off some of the pent-up frustration he felt.

"Yes, private? What is it?" Daul walked over to the great-coated Belzafester, taking a small piece of stone from the man's hands. No, not stone, it was something else. Nor was it bone or metal: it was all three, and yet it was none. It was as terrifying as anything Daul had ever seen.

It was a token forged from wraithbone, a rune of communication. Even as he touched, it he could hear the overwhelming sound of thousands upon thousands of sing-song syllables screeching in anticipation of the conflict to come. As he tried to get his bearing, an overwhelmingly powerful mind howled in fury, casting him from the song bodily.

Daul flew a good food back from the rune, propelled away by pure will. He hit the wall painfully as he aimed the plasma-pistol strapped to his augnmentic arm at the rune, firing twice to evaporate the stone entirely, "_Throne cursed blood and bloody hellfire from the bowels of the Eye!"_

He shot the ashes again for good measure.

He looked up into the confused and terrified faces of his retinue. Vira'capac sighed and crowed, "Foolish man-thing."

Susan said in a voice of genuine concern that surprised her as much as it did Daul, "Are you OK?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine." Daul shook his head to dismiss the furious presence of the Eldar talisman. "But we need to get out of here as soon as possible. The Eldar have allied themselves with Faust."

"What?" Shan hissed loud enough that it might have passed for normal human speech, "Why?"

"The Eldar protect their own interests at the cost of all other species in the universe." Daul growled as he tried to reach _anyone_ on his long range transmitter. "I don't even begin to speculate _why_ they do what they do. But we need to warn our forces that they're coming."

"I get the sense that that might be a bit too late, Inquisitor," Susan shouted in horror from the window. "They're here."

Daul followed her gaze and felt his heart stop. From their elevated point on the battlefield Daul could just make out the outline of a flock of swooping wing-tipped vehicles descending from the heavens like lances from heaven. An army of lithe, murderous creatures stepped in an angelic grace, as beautiful as it was terrible. The war-host had arrived.

"Well," Shen whispered in amused resignation as he pointed to a dozen massive war machines gliding above the ground around a vaguely humanoid shape, "There's your siege weapon, Inquisitor."

"A _Titan,_" Daul groaned, resting his face in the palm of his hand, "They brought a Titan_."_

"Would seem so," the private agreed. "Don't suppose you have something that can kill a Titan?"

_Daul's mind snapped to a black box bound in chains that sat within the _Endless Bounty_, a weapon at his disposal capable of unknowable damage if let loose. The words to summon the beast were simple enough. Just a few syllables and he could crush thething that stood in his way_. _His mouth began to roll around the first syllables_ – No, he wouldn't do it. Daul shook his head to dismiss the thought. He could almost hear the voice of Bast Hilder chiding him, "Boy, don't you go and do some damned fool thing you'll regret later. There ain't nothing worth losing who you are."

"No," Daul replied irritatedly. "I can't even begin to – Cairn what the throne are you doing?"

The Skitarii shoved Daul to the floor and started firing at the previously featureless black wall, into a gaping tear in reality. A lithe wraith-bone clad warrior covered in web-like patterns of blue and white fell to the floor, dead.

"Warp Spiders!" the private screamed as a tear opened behind him and a pair of power blades punctured his lungs. The Eldar screeched inhumanly as he dove forwards, creating a new portal in front of himself and disappearing with the impaled Imperial warrior.

"Out of the building! Now!" Daul leapt from the second story window and onto the ground below. He hit the ground hard and rolled to the left, just barely avoiding a net of deadly monomolecular razor wire. It tightened around the rocky ground, shredding it into powder.

Daul fired at where the razor wire had come from with his plasma-pistol, only to find that it was nothing but unoccupied air. He reached out with his senses, searching for where the next one would come, vaguely aware of the howls of agony from inside the bunker. Someone had been caught with the razor-wire webbing.

When a pocket of air began to slice open behind Daul, he did not hesitate in driving his blade into the nape of the eldar warrior's neck, pulling the energized weapon downward to slice from stern to stem. Realizing too late that a second portal had opened up, he held up his hand and repelled the incoming webs with a burst of telekinetic power, forcing the Eldar who'd fired them to flee back into the Warp.

He readied himself to slay the next thing that hopped out of the portal in front of him when, to his dismay, Susan Ivanova came through it on the quite dead Eldar's back. His apprentice looked up at him in astonishment before saying, "Well, that was new."

Daul lifted her from her fallen foe, firing at the vaguely humanoid shape of the nearby Eldar exarch as it used its carapace-like warp-jump generator to hop back into the bunker. A human head flew out of the bunker seconds later, though Daul was too occupied avoiding monomolecular webs to figure out whom.

"How the do we fight these guys?" The woman bellowed in consternation between alternate shots of the pistols in each hand. "They refuse to stop jumping all over the damn place."

"Open your mind," Daul growled, parrying a series of wrist blade blows from the exarch before it hopped backwards and disappeared. "You _coward – _no, not you Commander – open your mind to what is around you."

"A bit busy!" Susan shoved Daul to the ground as another web swept past where his head had been.

"Look, just get pissed off and let loose. The rest will take care of itself." Daul flung a fistful of lighting at a tear in space, cooking the warp-spider alive in his own armor.

"Down to one." the Kroot warrior chittered from inside the bunker.

"How do you know?" Susan growled in irritation, "They're jumping around all the damn place."

"Because, man-thing," the Kroot yelled as he fired, hanging out the second window. "Vira'capac can _smell _them."

Daul cried out in pain as the Exarch's blade sliced across his chest, perforating the side of his armor. It was a glancing blow, but painful in the extreme. First blood to him, then. Daul planted his hand in the Exarch's chest. Daul focused the pain into a single burst of energy in his palm as he smiled and said, "Farewell."

The astonished Exarch flew across the battlefield into what should have been a bone crushing collision with the cliff wall. However, the exarch vanished when he got within inches of the surface, reappearing on the clifftop.

The Exarch looked down at him from beyond the range of their weapons and bellowed in psychically enhanced reverberating challenge, "You are dead, mon'kiegh, you just are not smart enough to have stopped moving yet. You have killed my apprentices? There are a thousand more where they came from. Before this day ends, your head with be on a pike to adorn my personal transport. You are nothing, garbage to be wiped off the floor. For today is the day you meet your doom –"

Whatever else the Exarch might have had to say was quite rudely interrupted as the entire cliff burst into a ball of superheated plasma, tossing the Exarch's desiccated and sizzling corpse to the ground below. A Sh'lassen battle tank rolled up the path, stopping ten meters from the Imperials. Daul stared down its main cannon, waiting on baited breath as it turned his direction.

It was not marked with the insignias of the Sh'lassen government. The traitors had arrived.

V'cath, their Sh'lassen guide brayed in fear from where he crouched in the doorway of the bunker, staring at the sponson guns of the battle tank in anticipation of his own death.

It never came.

The front hatch to the tank popped open and a Sh'lassen man in grey robes climbed out the front, hooves clattering loudly on the side of it as he climbed down. He pulled back his hood to reveal that his face was clean shaven and that his horns had been removed entirely. V'cath actually gagged in disgust, apparently repulsed by the rebel's appearance.

Daul couldn't have cared less about the rebel Sh'lassen's appearance as it bowed and proceeded to speak to him in his native dialect of Metzik Gothic, "Time is of the essence, _fatebringer_. If you and your companions would please follow me, you are expected in Matok. You have my word that no harm will come to you or your companions."

"You do realize I came here to conquer Matok," Daul replied in confusion.

"This is known to us." the rebel replied, "As it is known to us that you will succeed. But not before you see what you must see. Not before you know what you must know."

"And if we refuse?" Susan growled, looking expectantly at the Skitarii warrior as he walked forward aimed a melta-pistol at the side of the stationary rebel tank.

"Then you will kill me." the rebel replied, "You will also likely die trying to make your way back to the battlefield."

"You seem awfully confident," Daul lowered his plasma-pistol and sheathed his sword. "Why?"

"Because Inquisitor, the path is already written," the rebel smiled, "Only the end remains."

"Kill him, eat him, and man things can take goat-man's tank," Vira'capac suggested helpfully as he sliced the heads off of the Eldar warriors, shoving them into a sack for a snack later. He pointed with his jagged knife to V'cath. "Other goat-man can drive."

"No," Daul replied slowly, looking into the Rebel priest's eyes. "Not this time, Vira'capac. This time, we go peacefully."

Daul didn't know why, but he _had_ to know. He simply _had_ to know.

It was written.

* * *

Fighting every rational instinct in his body, David ran in the opposite direction from every other able bodied crewman, heading towards where he knew the Eldar pirates had boarded the ship. He would _very_ much have preferred to be in his father's residence, sitting behind the numerous forcefields and barricades that prevented boarders from entering. He'd long ago lost count of how many times he'd sat in the fortified bunker of house Sáclair with a warm cup of soup and a blanket, waiting for the siege to break.

But he would not, _could _not, be idle. Not now, not while Bonafila was in danger. Faest Nor's surgery was only three decks up from where they'd breached the ship's hull, and he would _not_ cower in some hole while the woman he loved was in danger. He sprinted along the hallway with his ornate rifle held tightly to his chest, huffing from the exertion. He was not out of shape compared to most children of noble houses, but the effort of running at break-neck speed for the past thirty minutes was more than he usually engaged in.

He'd heard stories of what Eldar pirates did, how they could trap souls within rocks and summon death with a whisper. More so that even Chaos, they were the bogeyman of all shipborne men and women of the Empire. They would attack without warning or reason, their skillful violence matched only by their capricious nature. They flew the stars in ships as large as planets, serving their own unknowable needs and desires. There were even whispered stories of a dark city that lay outside of time and space, where the Eldar dwelled in shadows and nightmare.

They would _not_ take Bona.

"David Sáclair, where the _hell_ do you think you're going?" a harsh voice barked as he rounded the bend some ten meters from Surgery. Donat Enzo stared at him in blank-faced irritation, his lip curling slightly in exasperation as he crossed his arms over his carapace-armored breastplate.

"I, uh," David swallowed nervously. "I heard about the attack and I –" Throne it sounded stupid now that he was saying it out loud. " – I have to protect _Bonafila."_

"You decided to come _alone_ to face an unknown number of Eldar pirates, armed with a flak-jacket, a kitchen cleaver, and a lasrifle I'm almost positive you stole from your father's armory?" Donat repeated in a montone drawl.

"Well – uh – yes." David swallowed nervously and replied in as confident of a voice as he could muster. Somehow, speaking to Donat was more terrifying to him than even the prospect of fighting the Eldar had been. "She needs protection, and the Security can't catch every one of the slippery bastards with the Lionhearts on the planet."

"And you know that in the event that you actually faced an Eldar pirate, they would have hundreds if not _thousands_ of years of experience in warfare that you could not even _begin_ to hope to match. You know that it would mean almost certain torture and death at best?" Donat replied incredulously.

"I – I don't care. She needs me." David felt particularly small under the nobleman's judgemental gaze.

"Good." Donat replied. "Controlling the bulkhead to the surgery is a two-man job, and none of security can be spared."

"I – wait, what?" David blinked in surprise.

"And I will expect you at my house on Tuesday to discuss the conditions of your continuing courtship to my daughter tomorrow, providing that we both survive the day." Donat led David in the direction of the surgery. "Once the matter becomes official, I intend for you to be chaperoned till I can negotiate a proper dowry with your father."

"Oh." David replied lamely before it dawned on him what Donat was saying. Donat had just given David permission to _marry_ his daughter. "Yes – That – Yes sir! Thank you, sir."

"To hell with your parenthood," Donat chuckled amusedly. "A man who will _die _for my daughter is noble enough for me. But for both our sakes, let's not make that our goal."

"No sir," David beamed as they rushed to the surgery with his future father-in-law, "Of course not, sir."

In spite of the imminent danger, David briefly allowed himself a moment of unabashed happiness as he imagined his future with Bonafila. For once, everything was going as planned. Well, everything minus the pirates.

* * *

Earthforce One was more comfortable that what John was used to, more akin to a luxury liner from the days of yore than a space ship. Even as a pleasure craft, it was a bit excessive. The couch he was sitting on would have cost him two years' salary to buy, but making an Earthforce One that was even bigger, more armed, and more impressive than the one that had been destroyed had been a unifying factor for the Earth Alliance in the years following Santiago's assassination. It was a way of showing the terrorists that Earth would never bow to terrorism.

It was a noble sentiment. Unfortunately, it just happened to largely benefit the Terrorist-in-Chief. The smiling hearty-cheeked midwestern Brutus sat across from him with a glass of scotch, discussing baseball animatedly with John. It was actually quite nice.

John kind of liked the guy.

John didn't want to like him. Liking him as a person was inconvenient. When the impeachment trial finally came about, there would be no way for it not to come off as a personal betrayal.

But the truth was that he _did_ like William Clark. He was charming, if an unashamedly obvious politician in the extreme. If it weren't for the armed coup of the former President Santiago, he would have even been enjoyable company. Fortunately for John, his awkwardness around the President was interpreted as general nervousness around the most powerful man on Earth.

The president slapped him on the knee jovially, "Come on, Sheridan, lighten up. It's over. Relax."

"Yes, Mr. President," He replied with absolute professionalism, "Of course, Mr. President."

"Call me William," the President sighed in irritation as he sipped at his scotch. "There's no need to stand on formality."

"Yes, President William," Replied John, he raised his glass of scotch politely. He had yet to even sip it.

"Hah!" the President barked in amusement. "I made the right decision with you. You're as Earthforce as they come, Alliance through and through."

"If you say so, sir." John replied noncommittally.

"Actually, Captain, I have an ulterior motive in bringing you along. There are certain events that are going to come to light in the next few days. Certain events that will involve you personally." Clark sniffed his scotch and sighed, "Lord that's good. Aged to perfection."

John had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, "Events?"

"Well, I suppose I'm not the best one to explain this to you." The president waved to the secret service officer behind him. "But we do have an expert."

A tall, grinning man in a charcoal grey suit walked into the room and extended his hand to John. The man looked vaguely familiar, though exactly how he was familiar eluded him, "Have we met?"

"I've been on your station before, Captain," The man laughed cooly. "It is quite likely that I've popped up on your radar in my travels."

Clark snorted in amusement, "I'm sure you have. Captain Sheridan, please allow me to introduce Mr. Morden."

"Tell me, Captain," The man smiled. "What do you want?"

* * *

For once a chapter typed on a grown up sized keyboard. Aaaah how I missed it. Thanks go to Nutz! on SB for betaing.


	19. Chapter 19

There were days when the General hated his job.

Reports of skirmishes along the Drazi and Brakiri borders were becoming increasingly frequent, though neither government admitted to either initiating them or suffering any losses. Vorlon warships were appearing without warning through Non-Aligned World gates, huge gashes in their hull only hinting at some monstrous battle. The Vorlon ambassador was as cryptic as ever, warning that "The wind wanders as swiftly as the fields talk to the stars." And to top it all off, they'd had to do a total revamp of the station security codes, to prevent Susan Ivanova from providing them to the Empire.

Susan Ivanova defecting; he'd never seen that one coming. Thank God Sheridan hadn't had time to bring her in their plan to investigate Clark - now, that would have been a disaster. John was usually a decent judge of character, but he'd been way off base with the Commander. Then again, as a telepath she'd likely influenced his perception of her.

It was possible even that she'd been a conspirator in the death of President Santiago, it would go a long way towards explaining how the assassins had snuck past security. It even fit their theory of Psi Corps involvement; God, how hadn't Sinclair seen it coming? He'd been with the woman for an entire year, and there had to have been some sign. And now they had another psychic to work with. Could they even trust Miss Winters at all?

"Damn it, William," He sighed to himself, "Just eat your meal. You can fret later."

The ostrich made its final scraping kicks as the Ogryn held it down, cleaving its head at the base of its skull with a wide knife. The birds were too large and strong for anyone short of an Ogryn to slaughter unaided, but Mukruk had the beast butchered, plucked and gutted in the blink of an eye. The sour-looking abhuman then sliced the bird in half, handing the massive carcass over to the other apprentice chefs.

Mukruk was neither as amiable nor as well-tempered as General Hague had come to expect from Galut or the other Ogryn who'd taken up residence on the station, but that was likely because the head chef insisted upon forcing the giant to bathe regularly and wash his hands before handling any food.

And Imperial food was well worth the irritated grunts and expletives from Chef Amir's plus-sized apprentice.

Imperial cuisine was an adaptable and surprisingly utilitarian one: since the Endless Bounty's food stocks had varied drastically from port to port, they'd been forced to learn how to use new food stuffs quickly. The ostrich had obviously not been a staple part of Imperial cuisine prior to reaching the Earth Alliance, but they'd taken it and perfected it. It had only taken minutes and a small boxed lunch for Father Al'Ashir to convince William that they ought to give the Imperials permission to set up food stalls to help support the refugee population.

The stand William sat at was one of several recently erected food stalls in the section of the station now being called Imperial Row. The deliciously spicy scent of Imperial cooking wafted lazily from where a tall upright rotisserie lazily spun in place, exposing a haunch of spiced ostrich to an exposed flame. William's mouth watered in anticipation of the meal to come as he pointed at one of the laminated photographs hanging to the back of the stall, raising two fingers to indicate the level of spice he could handle. It was virtually nothing by Imperial standards, but he had no desire to repeat his disastrous decision of asking for anything higher than three fingers.

Chef Amir nodded once and held out his hands for payment, gladly taking the paperbound book that William offered. The corners of his lips quirking upward in amused approval, the chef gingerly placed the book on a stack of similar tomes, articles of clothing, and a chest William knew to be full of precious coins. The Imperials had little use and less interest in the Earth Alliance credit system, preferring to barter for useful items or Imperial coinage. It had become something of a running joke that a credit chit was utterly useless in the Imperial sector, but that a book of photos or an amusing hat could pay a king's ransom.

Puffing up his chest in pride, Amir slapped his heart twice with his right hand before kissing his fingers and saying "Naõs Dio Imperator Rex" as he passed over Williams' newly-blessed meal. Puffs of steam rose from hunks of dark meat and spiced rice, scintillating and savory.

"It looks fantastic," William nodded grabbing a hunk of the meat with his fingers and raising it to his nose as was customary. "Absolutely delicious."

Amir nodded eagerly "De-leeshos. Vee- ri." saying the only two words of English he spoke with any fluency. He bowed deferentially to William, taking care not to meet the General's eyes or turn his back to the General as he addressed another customer.

All the Imperials avoided direct eye contact with him. It would be highly improper for crewmen to look upon their commanding officer as an equal in Imperial society. The Imperials were not in Imperial society any more, but the taboos of the Endless Bounty were the product of generations. General Hague was the ranking officer on ship, essentially making him the "king" of Babylon 5 and worthy of an irritating level of bowing and scraping.

William was by no means the only non-Imperial walking along Imperial Row; a smattering of humans and aliens were examining the wares of Imperial craftsmen or enjoying Imperial cuisine. There were far fewer aliens than humans though, as the Imperials were insular by nature and unwilling to even barter with the Gaim or pak'ma'ra. The Centauri and Narn had earned a sort of grudging respect from the Imperials, and though it could by no means ever be called friendship, it was functional enough.

The real issue, and the purpose of Willaim's presence in the Imperial Diaspora was their ouright hatred of the Minbari. The Imperials despised the bone-heads, no if's and's or but's about it. It was all station security could do to keep them from gutting any Minbari too foolish to avoid them.

This would simply not do. It was hard enough to keep the various unarmedalien races from causing problems on station. They'd set up checkpoints and screening procedures to ensure that the Imperials didn't bring any prohibited arms out of their section of the station, but all that had served to prove was that the Babylon 5 security officers were not sufficiently imaginative when it came to figuring out concealed weapons.

What kind of psychopath figures out how to hide mustard gas canisters within their own fingers?

This needed to stop, today. He would not have the station in shambles when Captain Sheridan returned. It was fortunate that bishop Al'Ashir was competent – and punctual. William smiled, waving a two fingered greeting to the graying man as he rounded the bend. The priest's thick beards bounced off his generous gut as he pulled his skirted robes up to avoid tangling them in the many cords strewn across the floor, exposing sandal-covered feet tattooed with double-headed eagles.

"Greetings are happy salutation, Captain of this station!" Al'Ashir bowed in respect to William's rank, his English patois more enthusiastic than accurate. "Is good to be seeing today on day of private contemplating the death of Primarch Sanginius. Fewer services for me to manage, only classes for the young."

"I've heard nothing but good things about your world in Down Below," William put some of his meat on a plate for the brother confessor, knowing that the offer would be declined. The priest was scrupulous in only eating sanctified foods, though his generous belly suggested that such means were in no short supply. "You're becoming very popular with the Lurkers."

"I not ignore the lost," It was as close to outright admonition as the confessor ever spoke. "I have much. They little need so I give what I having."

"It's not unappreciated, and we've had a downswing in on station crime from the Lurkers since you started offering meals with your services," William shrugged, "It was a good idea, I'll grant you that."

"When will Al'Ashir be seeing listen to His word?" The priest pulled an honest to goodness scroll and quill out of his pouch and started scribbling down notes. "Apologies, idea for sermon is coming to Al'Ashir."

"Actually I'd been meaning to speak with you about some of your sermons," William pulled a small green pamphlet out of his pocket. A program of Al'Ashir's last service. Though all the actual service was conducted in Gothic, the priest had taken great care to translate the meaning into English so that it would be accessible by any humans attending. "There are certain passages that you're talking about that are – well – alarming."

"Alarming?" Al'Ashir looked up from his writing. "What is being alarmed?"

"Well Father, the Minbari are lodging a number of complaints against you for inciting hatred against them," He tapped the pamphlet. "And I can't help but see their point. You actually preach that one should 'beware the alien, for his mind is treachery and his purposes are anathema,' and that 'one finds no profit in forgetting the sins of the past."

"Yes is accurate," Al'Ashir nodded. "Those are the wisdom of the Saints."

"Father Al'Ashir," William sighed exasperatedly. "The war with the Minbari isover. We have difficulty enough in getting our two peoples to coexist without you demanding that people mistrust non-humans or glorify their deaths. Your saints commit outright genocide in your sermon."

"Old testament is full of violence. Glorifies it not?" The preacher shook his head. "Or is killing in the name of your god only a work of fiction."

"That was a long time ago," William sighed. "We've learned from our past mistakes."

"Still human. Still made. Rejecting human nature not make you different, only sad." Al'Ashir pulled a dogeared copy of the Qur'an from his satchel. "History, allegory, violence, peace, all things hold part of truth. Sometimes forgiveness good. Sometimes hatred good. Never forgetting best. Never forget mistakes."

"At some point we must move to the point where the crimes of the past don't matter, Al'Ashir." William sighed, "I appreciate not trusting the Minbari. I fought them for as long as anyone else, nad lost friends and family to them. I don't like them. But we can't have you inciting people to hate them."

"Word of Emperor preaches caution. Contempt shields us from those who would destroy us, guides us from those who would corrupt us." The holy man steepled his fingers, eyes twinkling past his hands. "Teaches self-reliance."

"We gain no benefit from stirring up resentment against the Minbari." The General popped another piece of meat into his mouth, chewing between words. "We're allies now. Times have changed."

"Have they?" Al'Ashir actually laughed, a raspy chuckle he was clearly unaccustomed to using often. "How? Are Minbari today not same Minbari of ten years ago? All Minbari murdering humans died after war ended? All came to justice?"

"It's complicated," William replied, "There were other factors involved."

"They were strong. You were weak. Al'Ashir sees no complication." The Priest opened his prayer book, running his aging fingers over the thick parchment and hand-written calligraphy. The illustrated images around the Gothic writing of alien faces all menaced and leered up at William as the Brother Confessor smirked knowingly across the table in his direction. "It is not unheard of. Happens often enough in history. The strong oppress the weak."

"We weren't weak." William snapped, fully aware that had the Minbari not surrendered at the battle of the line his species would be nothing more than a footnote in the Minbari history texts. The race who dared to attack the Minbari war-machine. "And we – we won."

The lie of it stung William's tongue.

"Alliance did not lose. Not dying only small victory, even when you call it winning." Al'Ashir shook his head. "Your people young. You know little history. Al'Ashir knows history. Al'Ashir remembers more than you realize. You are child, not your fault."

The preposterousness of being told how young he was actually made William swallow wrong as he sipped from his goblet of water. He smacked his chest firmly, coughing as he replied, "Brother Confessor, I'm hardly an infant. Twenty years can't possibly make –"

"Al'Ashir lives two hundred and four cycles General." The Brother Confessor replied as though it were the most normal thing in the world to say. "More or less, for convert from Imperial standard to Alliance calendar not perfect."

"Two hundred and fifty – how? How is that even possible?" The man couldn't have been older than sixty. There was some signs of greying in his hair and beard, but there was nothing to indicate that the man had recently celebrated his bicentennial.

"Imperial medicine is Al'Ashir's one indulgence. Al'Ashir lives modestly, but does prefer living. Drugs to stay younger. Expensive, but valuable." He smiled sadly. "But no more."

"Why?" William blinked in shock, "Why would you give that up?"

"Price to preach. Not simple to make, not cheap. Need specialist, have on _Endless Bounty_. No have on Babylon. Brought some with me," Reaching into his pocket he pulled and empty tube out and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. "But gone. All gone. Al'Ashir will age."

"What did you use it for?" The General queried.

"Used last of drugs to help the sick." He laughed heartily, "The blind see. The crippled walk. Little girl will live. Necessary use."

"Brother Confessor, I cannot have you administering medicine to people on station without a license," William interjected. "Especially untested treatments; we don't know if it will have any consequences. This isn't how we do things in the Alliance."

"No, is not. Alliance let humans starve and suffer while xenos live in luxury." Al'Ashir's voice snapped like a whip-crack of anger. "Let orphans and exploited go into xenos servitude to survive."

"The Lurkers are unfortunate side effect of poverty. I'd help them if I had the power, but it just isn't a priority at the moment." There was no way that Congress would put social welfare reform in the budget for undocumented workers on a military installation. They'd arrest the lot of them long before considering it.

"They are your blood. Your people." Slamming his book closed in fury, the Brother Confessor jabbed William in the chest. "This heart is the same. Beats the same. Feels the same. Bleeds the same. You are humans. Brothers! Yet you ignore their pain."

"This station isn't here for them-"

"Obviously not, when leader come to Al'Ashir for hurt feelings of Minbari."

"The two aren't related, Al'Ashir. And it's time to move past the Minbari incident."

"Forgiveness is earned. What have Minbari done for forgiveness? Nothing. Minbari apology was not murdering species. Not murdering not the same." He raised his hand in admission, "There are good Minbari. There are good xenos. Them forgive. But one should not trust xenos. Like them, but not trust. Even xenos who are friend are not allies. Can't trust most humans and they share blood."

"We have plenty of Alien allies, Al'Ashir," William replied, "Even in the Minbari war."

"They fight for you? Die for you? Protect you?" Al'Ashir shook his head. "Medicine, bandages, food. These are not allies, they are a deathbed vigil watching you die. Cowards and crows, picking at the wounded. The sold you guns and blankets and hoped you'd die away from their eyes so they did not have to watch their cowardice."

"They were scared of what the Minbari could do to them," William couldn't help but bitterly agree with the Brother Confessor on that point at least; the Non-Aligned Worlds had been stingy in their aid. Not ten years after saving them from the Dilgar slaughtering their worlds and people, they were unwilling to face the Minbari. "I _truly_ do se your point but they wanted to protect – "

"Their own people," Al'Ashir finished for him. "Blood keeps strong. Humans all distant family, after thousands of years all human related. Ancient fathers, sons, brother and uncles protecting their flock. Xenos same. Protect families, protect blood. Save themselves before us. It is truth."

"We're trying to fix that here. This place, this station, is an opportunity to make new connections, and to create a new culture. It was not long ago that humans would have slaughtered each other over petty notions of race and nation. We re-defined what it meant to be human, just as the aliens re-defined themselves when they took to the stars," William rejoined. "And part of that is forgiving the past wrongs we've done each other. We need to be better than our enemies."

"I will not preach blindness." Al'Ashir snapped in irritation. "I have moved far enough from the World. Be grateful that Al'Ashir allow the xenos to hear the world of the Emperor. Granting them a chance at salvation! Is not sufficient?"

Al'Ashir's tone suggested that continuing the conversation would go nowhere productive, "I'll tell you what. If I agree to attend one of your sermons and to talk with the Senate about getting some concessions for the Lurkers will you agree to talk about the Minbari War less often? I'm not saying avoid the subject entirely, but please just focus on less divisive topics for the moment."

"If you were to assist soup kitchen after service. If you listen to problems of poor then perhaps Al'Ashir do that." The Brother Confessor nodded slowly. "But Al'Ashir would wish to get permission to open a school. Hire teachers."

"A school?" William blinked. Babylon 5 had many things, but an actual school was one thing it had never hosted. Resources being as limited as they were, it had been decided that facilities encouraging people to raise families on station was not in the budget. "What would you teach? Who would teach?"

"Math, physics, history, logic, civics, many things one learns to become adult. There are children in Down Below. They do not learn. Fools turn to thieves," Al'Ashir tapped his own forehead. "Learning to read. Learning to write. Necessary."

"You can have your school Al'Ashir, provided that you have it open to allchildren. Human and alien." He ignored Al'Ashirs scandalized gasp. "That's my price Father. Take it or leave it."

"Very well," The Brother Confessor acquiesced. "If must be."

"Pleasure speaking with you as always, Father Al'Ashir," William shook the clergyman's hand firmly.

"The Emperor Protects." Al'Ashir replied in parting, standing up and walking away with a speed one rarely expected from a two hundred year old man. General Hague respected the man greatly, even if he didn't necessarily like the Imperial religion. The entire faith was too focused upon the deification of their leadership for comfort, and anything but blind obedience to that authority seemed to be sinful.

It had its perks he supposed. The work ethic of the Imperials was never in question, nor was their tenacity. Their understanding of union work regulations was another matter entirely though. William pretended not to see the servitor repairing a malfunctioning door two yards to his right as he sipped the broth at the bottom of his bowl of meat, the savory drippings ever bit as satisfying as the rest. Arguing with the ubiquitously dull-witted servitors would be a waste of time and energy, as the poor creatures had no real minds of their own.

He wiped his fingers, turning with the intention of walking back to his office, before turning back to the servitor. Being annoying to accomplish shouldn't bar an officer from doing what was right. He stood to go over and order the construct to stop when a familiar voice said, "Sir!"

Officer Welch was approaching him from a side corridor, followed closely by the Ogryn Galut. "You do not want to interrupt that one, sir."

"And why is that, Officer?" William scratched the back of his neck in irritation. "It's breaking the law."

"Yep, it is." Officer Welch agreed. "And if you try to stop it from interrupting the law, it's going to think that you're sabotaging the ship and will send a warning to the three combat servitors they've got chained up in Kerrigan's ship."

"I thought that I was clear that those things were to be disabled." William growled.

"You were, sir, but I frankly don't trust Kerrigan's word when it comes to turning off her creations. We already had one close call with the combat servitors, and I'd prefer not to repeat it." The security officer shuddered. "It's a good thing the Ogryn were there to keep them under control."

"Servitors not think much," Galut nodded in agreement. "Ogryn good at holding things down. Kapruk broke his arm, but that healed by Medicus Franklin. Medicus Franklin good medicus, fix things quick."

"Well we appreciate it Galut, you've been very helpful." The Ogryn's ugly face split into a toothy grin, his lopsided smile somewhat straighter than the last time William had seen it. Kapruk's arm wasn't the only thing Dr. Franklin had seen to repairing.

"Actually sir, the boys have been meaning to bring this up to you for a while," Officer Welch nervously cracked the knuckles of his hand, clearly uncomfortable. "We were waiting for – ya know – the Chief to be back, him and the Captain. Didn't want them to feel like we were working behind their backs or anything. But it might be a long time and I'm running security now that he's gone."

"I appreciate how you feel. I prefer to think of myself as warming Captain Sheridan's chair till he gets back," William nodded sympathetically, "But we can't keep all the important things on hold."

"No sir, of course not." Officer welch dropped his voice to a whisper. "It's just, the Ogryn sir. They're considered property. The Ogryn have fewer rights in Imperial society than a damn house cat."

"You mean they're slaves?" Somehow, the Empire keeping slaves wasn't particularly surprising to him. They had a strange glibness about the value of an individual human life.

"Not slave!" Galut sighed, "Lou not get it. Galut has bond of freedom to for cost of his room and food, life not cheap in space. When Galut pays cost of freedom, Galut is free."

"Galut," Officer Welch sighed, "has any Ogryn ever paid the cost of freedom?"

The Ogryn pursed his lips, "Not sure, but must be there. After all, why else have fee?"

"The salary they earn isn't even close to enough to cover it Galut," the officer replied sadly. He shook his head and turned to the General, "I tried to show him on a calculator but he just didn't get it. Shiro keeps trying to explain this to them, but they just don't get it."

"Numbers are hard," Galut grunted irritatedly. "Not important if fee more than salary. Galut just work harder to earn it. Gault _earn _freedom, Galut hard worker."

"That's not now it – never mind," Officer Welch acquiesced. "General, we can't keep on letting this go on. The Ogryn don't deserve it."

"We can't interfere with how other governments allocate their civil rights, Officer Welch." The General replied, "If they aren't getting enslaved within our borders, there isn't much we can do about it. They have equal rights on the station at least."

"It's worse," Officer Welch patted the massive Ogryn gently on the arm, his voice softening as one might use when talking with a child. "Come on buddy. Tell him what you told me."

"That was a secret," Galut whispered in a scandalized tone. "Galut wasn't supposed to say."

"Galut you can't stay afraid of this guy." Officer Welch's voice firmed. "We willprotect you. I will never let you get beaten again. You're better than he is. "

"You can't." Galut's voice hitched and a thumb sized tear ran down his face. "He – you don't know what he can do. What he has done."

"Sir I want to give Galut and any Ogryn who don't want to be slaves any more amnesty on station," He handed a tissue to the Ogryn, it was woefully undersized but the gesture seemed to matter more to the giant than the actual scrap of paper. Galut dabbed at his eyes, holding the paper between thumb and forefinger. The officer looked at William with a look of determination, "Like you said, we can't force them to be civilized in their damn Empire, but we can act like human beings on our turf."

"Galut," William said in a soothing voice. "Do you want stay here on the station with us? I can't promise that it will be easy but I can promise you that you will be free."

Galut's break hitched, "Galut would – Galut would like that."

There were days when the General loved this job.

* * *

The golden armored figured watched the battlefield, waiting.

Soon. The end would come soon.

Too long he had slumbered, too long he had sat idle while his people fell into decline at the genocidal hands of the alien and the psychic. Too long had they toiled under the yolk of oppression from both Vorlon and Shadow, forcing him to hide lest their ire fall down upon his entire species.

He'd watched the young races grow, timeless, immortal, guiding them towards their greater glory. In secret, always he acted in secret. But the time of secrets was soon ending. A new beginning for his people would come, an Empire beyond the imagining of mortal kindred.

The old ones would tremble and the younger races would bow to the might of his people, reason and order guiding them in all things. No longer would disorder rule the galaxy, no longer would people live under false gods or the capricious void beings of the Galaxy.

There would be order. There would be peace. There would be glory.

And he would finally live to see the galaxy as it was meant to be, united under the rule of his people.

Soon.

Oh so soon.

The golden armored figured watched the battlefield, waiting.

* * *

The first hint Sergei got that something was terribly wrong happened when the Imperial comms net went silent, cutting off Danzig's voice mid sentence as he gave orders to the various combat groups. The military grade comm-bead ought to have been good for ten clicks even if they were being jammed. But as they were rather occupied in assaulting a fortified position, it didn't immediately register in his conscious mind.

The fangs trying to perforate his gullet were a more pressing concern. "Get this beast off of me!"

The hound bit down hard on his gantleted arm, razor sharp fangs puncturing the flak and slicing the meat of his arm. Sergei bashed the creature's skull in with the butt of his rifle, crushing the beast's eye into a meaty mass of seeping fluid. The creature yowled in pain, releasing the Lionheart's arm and giving him time to fatally bayonet the wounded beast's gullet.

He pulled the trigger of his las rifle and swore furiously as the trigger clicked, sputtering and sparking from where the lenses had been crushed in the melee. His target, one of the saurian mouthed half breeds with oversized talons, grabbed Amir by his arms and ripped them from his body at the socket before biting the man's face off.

Gazan's firearm suffered no such impediment, puncturing the beast's groin with a grapefruit sized hole and separating the creature from it's legs. Its foul blood sprayed across the floor, venomous toxins mingling with the already disgusting muck and mire as it seized in the throes of agony.

"Get me that damn gun!" Sergei bellowed over the collective screams, braying, grunts and howls of the ongoing battle.

The gun in question was a plasma cannon of considerable size currently being used to stop a combat group of Narn superheavy vehicles from supporting the western forces currently overrun by half-breed sappers. Were it disabled it might be possible to re-direct the flow of combat so that the Leman Russ tanks could better support the Alliance advance. It was easier said than done, since the cannon was at the top of a ten-story tower accessible only from a narrow entrance that permitted one person at a time to enter or exit.

At this point, Sergei would have happily taken his pants off and danced from here to the eye of Terror if it would get him some decent air support.

Sergei grabbed Anik by his collar and yanked him down into cover as a bulbous headed half-breed with a long proboscis where its mouth ought to have been opened its milky white eyes and screamed at the top of its lungs. A torrent of green warp-flames rocketed down the trench, cooking two men of Sergei's squad and flinging shards of razor sharp obsidian from the ground into the air.

A braying screech cried out from the ten foot high lip of the trench as a dozen Triumvirate partisans slid down the side of the trench, firing their phased-plasma rifles at the psychic creature. They seemed to defy gravity, deftly navigating the almost sheer walls with their thick cloven hooves.

The thin barrier of telekinetic energy surrounding the beast crumpled, bathing the monstrous half-breed with supercharged matter. Sergei led the charge over the beast's roasted carcass, sliding through a narrow window and opening fire at point-blank range into the chest of a startled Dilgar soldier before flinging a grenade down the stairs.

The Partisan sergeant, a hoary old goat with horns that were cracked and broken from prolonged combat, bleated approvingly and nodded to Sergei, tossing his own grenade down the passageway and holding up his fist to his men in a gesture of pause. He brayed out in the Triumvirate language, cutting across his neck in a word of warning.

"That bad?" Sergei queried, understanding the partisan's meaning. They weren't numerous enough to take this position, even with thirty Lionhearts and partisans.

The sergeant cut across his neck once more, nodding emphatically.

"We have to take the gun," Sergei mimed an explosion, making a boom noise for emphasis. "This cannon needs to go."

The goat man waved to a soldier with a large pack, braying in the alien language once more. The partisan soldier pulled the pack open, exposing a convex silver disc the size of a man's chest and placing it upon the floor. A blue light glowed at the disc's center as the partisan placed his hand at the center braying a pass-phrase of some sort and activating the disk.

Long spidery legs extended from the device as it rose up in the air, hovering at eye level before speeding down the stairs. Sergei barely had time to muster a "what is that?" before the partisans were in motion.

Hooves scratched and scrambled as the hoary warriors leapt on their powerful legs into whatever space they could find inside the ruined bunker. They wrapped their faces and snouts in soot-stained cloth, taking extraordinary care to wrap their eyes and ears.

"Oh Throne, it's a bomb!" Sergei screeched, taking cover behind an upturned desk and slapped his hands over his ears. No wonder the partisans were so far behind enemy lines - they were saboteurs.

The tower shook as the machine found its target, the deafening sound of wrenching metal and falling stone thundering past the palms of Sergei's hands. The terrified voices of his men echoed from outside the window as boulders and shrapnel rained down from the sky.

A cloud of dust, ash and charred bits of half-breed whooshed past, the scents of sulfur and cordite crisp upon the fetid air even through Sergei's breathing mask.

"Are we all still alive?" Gazan's irritated voice echoed from where he crouched in the door-frame of the tower, a slight disappointedly mocking lilt to his tone.

"Lamentably," griped one of the newer Lionhearts, Irvan, as he hacked up a mouthful of ash. The fool hadn't attached his mask properly. "Throne, that tastes vile."

"Then fix the buckle properly, newblood," Sergei slapped Ivran hard across the back of his head, "Chem grenades taste worse."

"Who's injured?" The narrow-cheeked Batin rose from the floor, shaking the dust from his chemoline cloak with a flourish that restored it to its natural crimson hue. Sergei's lip curled at the implied edge of command in it. Batin hadn't ever been command material, and resented the fact. But until Batin exceeded his authority there wasn't much Sergei could do about the man's posturing.

"Ahmir's unconsious," Falin barked in irritation. "And I think my Throne-cursed ears are never going to stop ringing. I feel like I just went ten rounds with a Space Marine."

"Stop your whining, Falin," Saha'la chortled in rebuke. "You're alive, aren't you?"

"Argos, take point," Sergei waved the weapon's specialist forward, letting the teenage Lionheart lead the way up the now-gutted tower. Argos was not as eager or gung-ho as his predecessor Hamman had been, nervous and a bit twitchy, but his reaction time in a crisis was preternaturally fast to the trigger.

The teenaged Lionheart swallowed nervously as he led the ascent, followed closely by a partisan carrying a heavy flechette weapon of some sort that whirred with the predatory menace of phased-plasma. The Lionhearts and partisans walked into charred remains of the artillery position, bayonetting any half-breed who still clung to life.

The Sh'lassen long range cannon was still vaguely recognizable from the half-barrel and crumpled stabilizing struts, but with so much of it crumpled or melted it would never fire again. Sergei indulged in a brief whoop of joy that his soldiers echoed; the Narn could advance at their leisure.

"Check if there's anything we can use," Sergei waved at the corpses of the half-breeds. "Las-charges, grenades, maps, anything."

The Partisan sergeant bowed his head and jerked his chin towards the stairs, pawing at the rubble on the ground with his left hoof. He pounded his chest in a gesture of salute before turning on the Lionhearts and heading back down the stairs, apparently satisfied that his goal had been achieved.

Sergei nodded in thanks, "Yes, of course. May the Emperor's will favor your course."

"Sir!" Gazan shouted, shifting a sizable piece of rubble. "I think we've got a live one."

"Gut him and be done with it." Sergei replied, waking out onto the balcony and surveying the battlefield. The smoke and haze obscured all but the largest of war machines, a murky sea of angry ash clouds and purulent geysers. Pockets of land would briefly flash into obscurity as some great war machine ignited the skies, giving glimpses of men and monsters tearing each other to pieces.

A far ridge thrummed with the familiar barking roar of imperial cannon fire; the Leman Russ tanks had finally joined the battle. The Belzafesters were a bunch of uptight pains, but they'd made position on time in spite of their damaged transport. How the devil had they managed that?

"Sir," repeated Gazan. "You need to see this."

Sergei sighed and walked over to his medic, taking care not to slip and fall on the uneven ground or step on the exposed wiring. The rubble Gazan had moved, as it transpired, was covering a small alcove filled with maps and charts, most of them too singed or torn by the explosion to be of any real use. They did seem to be doing an adequate job of absorbing the thick blood leaking out of the Dilgar officer's gaping chest wound. The feline creature was too pitiful to even hate, it yowled despondently as it struggled to keep its slippery mess of intestine from falling out of its front. She - it was clearly feminine, despite its alien nature - looked forlornly at her side arm with her one good eye, knowing as well as Sergi that she'd die from internal bleeding if she even tried to reach for it.

"I am dying," The creature stated in a matter of fact tone. She spoke an odd mess of high and low Gothic words, a growling purr on her hard syllables coloring it further, "No... not dying. Already dead."

"Yes," Gazan knelt down and examined her wound, surreptitiously taking her side arm and sack of grenades. "I do not know the biology of your species, but you've lost several pints of blood already."

"A pity," The Dilgar officer smiled sadly, her breath coming out in desperate gasps. "I assume you're here for Faust?"

"Yes," Sergei replied. There seemed little point in lying.

"You're a fool," the Dilgar growled angrily. "You will die."

"Not before you though." Sergei smirked. "And not before you tell me what I want to know."

The Dilgar shook her head, a pained motion of her neck that only moved her head by centimeters. "No, I don't suspect I will. I've barely got life enough in me for this conversation. But it will be enough... just barely but enough..."

"Who is your commander?" Sergei held up a shredded map of the trenches. "Where can I find him?"

"She," The Dilgar's mouth bled profusely choking her words, "She is not for ... She is... she will defeat you... you do not know what power Faust commands..."

"Sergei," Gaza sighed, "I don't think she'll give us anything useful."

"No," Sergei agreed, raising from his crouch and taking her side arm from Gazan. "I don't think she will -" He looked down at the familiar design of the weapon in his hand and swore angrily turning back to the Dilgar, but too late. "- Throne, no!"

The Dilgar officer, tears in her eyes, drove a thin stiletto-like protrusion of wraithbone into her heart, cracking the gem-like protrusion in its handle. As the coruscating blue energies wracked her broken body, she howled a final burst of furious invective, "You cannot win!"

Gazan grabbed Sergei by the shoulders and yanked him backwards into the main room, bellowing orders to the Lionhearts as a dumbstruck Sergei watched the woman's flesh warp and contort. Protrusions of thorny vine-like white marble burst from her body, consuming her wholly in an ethereal burst of warp-flames as it reshaped her into a twisted mockery of mortal form. Her mawkish jaw distended two meters high as light burst forth from the map room.

The Lionhearts fired upon the stone creature, cracking and crushing marble vines and feline architecture, only to have it re-form from the ashes and rubble. Undaunted, the grinning cheshire beast wrapped in marble flora yowled in victory as it settled down. It sat unmoving upon the floor as a crackling hiss of ozone and pale blue light heralded a rippling pool of light in the creature's mouth and a lithe figure sauntered out of the blinding light.

"Oh hell," Sergei's heart caught in his throat as he heard the giggling, almost-girlish titters of glee from the other side of the portal, while a dozen lithe figures seemed to wade through the cloying brightness. "No.. no.. not now... not here."

"Open fire!" Sergei barked to his men, reaching into his pack for a fist sized brick of det-cord and slapping it on the ground. "Full retreat. Code 5 incursion. Eldar, they're Throne-cursed Eldar."

The Lionhearts scrambled to get to the stairs, firing at the portal to give them time as the nightmarish howling of the warriors echoed from the portal. Fear seeped into Sergei's very marrow, the sort of cold, cloying and irrational feeling that death would soon be upon him. His knees shook uncontrollably as he wobbled and stumbled in retreat, leading his men out of the bunker.

He had to get away. He had to get away now, or he would die. He knew that he would die. Oh Throne, why had he agreed to go on this mission. Why had he decided to become a lionheart? He openly wept as he reached the trenches with his men, hiccuping animatedly. The were all going to die and he knew it. They all knew it.

The Shi'lassen sappers, apparently in the midst of preparing themselves a meal in the trenches, stood up in shock as the Lionhearts huddled in what cover they could find, hiding from the screams. The screaming, dear Emperor, he could hear the screaming as it came – wait? He knew that screaming. He knew what it did, how it turned men's bowels into water. Eldar trickery, sorcery. And he was whimpering like a girl in the dark.

Well to the Eye with witches, and to the Eye with fear. He smashed the activator to the det-cord and the screaming turned to wails of furious pain. "Take that you xenos scum!"

There was no time to appreciate his temporary victory. Bloodied and wailing furiously, the squad of Eldar women clad in form-fitting suits of wraithbone shot out from the rubble of the bunker, propelled by their own Warp sorcery-enhanced reflexes.

An Eldar female flung herself towards Sergei, twisting her lithe form in a way he hadn't previously realized was possible as she evaded a blast of crimson light from his hot-shot lasrifle. The psychic energies pulsing around her sizzled ominously, blindingly bright bursts of color and sound thundering in the confined space of the trench.

She leapt over him, propelling herself forward with a well planted kick to Sergei's chest that planted him in the muck as she decapitated an unfortunate Lionheart. The soldier's still terrified mouth opened and closed in the muck, trying to yell a warning to Falin.

Gasping for breath Sergei writhed across the thick black muck of the floor, scrambling backwards over the eviscerated innards of Martius as the bisected man struggled to pull his legs back to his torso with a ragged length of intestine.

"Knife-eared whore!" He howled in fury as the Eldar decapitated another Shi'lassen goat-man, her unnatural blade desiccating the body to ash. "Eldar witch!"

The woman let ought a haughty laugh, dancing backwards as he let loose with Martinus' shotgun before spinning left to avoid a downward chop from one of her male allies. Without thinking, he fired into the back of the male Eldar's knee, blowing the narrow limb to smithereens at the joint. He toppled over, nicking his face upon his own blade and howling in torment as the blade's venom dissolved his flesh and muscle down to the bone.

The astonished Eldar turned to their wounded compatriot, briefly freezing in their gleeful slaughter as he howled in agony before bursting into joyous laughter and continuing in their murderous reveling. Sh'lassen goat and Lionheart alike were slaughtered like cattle, eldritch xenotech blades making a mockery of the Lionheart's carapace armor.

Sergei struggled against a heavy wave of telekinetic force that ripped the gun from his fingers as a particularly haughty woman planted her knee in his side, and grasped him by the neck. Lithe fingers gripped his throat with unnatural strength, crushing the life out of him. He beat at her face and neck with his fist, plumes of warp-sorcery preventing him from actually making contact.

She stared eagerly into his eyes with an terrifying intensity as his skin turned purple and his eyes bulged, her vice-like hands preventing him from breaking. Laughter rung in his ears even as his vision faded, psionic reverberations trebling and distorting the woman's already inhuman timber.

Sergei heard the trumpets of the golden throne calling him to the lands of his ancestors as he could handle it no longer. With his last effort he focused all his spite for the woman into a dagger, in the hopes that he might at least distract the psychic long enough for one of his men to get in a shot at her.

"_Curious creatures, you are. Pale imitations of ourselves, but a passable facsimile considering the limited period for genetic manipulation_." The inhuman presence of the Eldar witch forced itself into his head, probing tendrils caressing his memory with luscious pangs of agony. "_The Mon'keigh have prospered in our absence. How fascinating._"

Sergi croaked in defiant reply, a wet "gwarp" as close to rudeness as he could manage. Though if the Eldar's scandalized titter of amusement was any indication, the meaning of his anatomically improbable insult had been properly conveyed.

"_Defiance! Oh, how long has it been since we tasted such sweet defiance? I shall savor the moment when you become strong enough to match that defiance with action. Perhaps you may even amuse me._" The fingers left his throat, discarding him onto Martinus' corpse with bored irritation as the Eldar disengaged from the Lionhearts' corpses and soared out of the trench on glittering clouds of prismatic energy, their tittering laughter echoing mockingly across the battlefield. Sergei grasped the loose earth of the trench wall, digging deep in the soft ground as he gasped in the foul smelling air.

Amusing? His defiance tasted amusing?

He'd be sure to make sure the bitch choked on it.

Fingers shaking wildly, he snapped his breath mask back into place over his face, counting down from ten to steady his thoughts. A thousand flying constructs of bone and warp-craft swirled in predatory menace through the gaseous clouds of Matok, hellish green balefire streams soaring behind them in monstrous repose. The braying screeches of men and Shi'lassen echoed across the trench as men struggled to treat envenomed wounds and severed limbs.

The horns. Sergei could still hear the horns, as real and omnipresent as when he'd thought the golden throne was calling him. War cries, the Eldar were using trumpets enhanced by some sort of warp devilry to make them heard across the entire battlefield. It was more than trumpets; an entire orchestra of psychic instruments echoed across the battlefield in victorious symphonic ultimatum.

"Emperor Almighty," Sergei whispered as the school of angry flyers parted, and a figure as tall as the spire of Matok floated to the ground with the sort of elegance and grace one would expect of a Gerran ballerina. "Sweet Emperor Almighty, please save us."

The distant thunder of a company of Narn super-heavy artillery batteries thundered, laser fire scourging across the roiling cloudscape to collide with the opalescent screen of energy surrounding the Eldar Titan. A hundred smaller shapes burst into flame, paper thin wraith-bone flyers and hard shelled psychic-constructs unable to survive the withering counterstrike. The massive wraith-bone creature pirouetted on its spindly legs, moving with a grace and poise that belied its massive stature.

Jutting from where one might have expected a hand on a humanoid construct, a bulbous sliver flower glowed with an orange burst of color and thunderous noise that annihilated a kilometer wide circle of mountainside, smiting the gnats harrying at its sides. To their credit, the Narn artillery managed another two salvos before the Eldar Titan brought its primary cannon to bear and condemned the mountainside to the hell-scape of the warp in a salvo of dimensionally disrupting energies.

Gazan gripped Sergei by his shoulder and helped the man limp into cover, "Come on sir, we have to move. More Eldar could come out of that portal at any time."

"Yes," Sergei agreed. "Yes. We need to regroup with the other surviving Lion-hearts. This changes nothing for us. We stick to the plan."

"Plan my ass! That thing is huge!" Falin growled angrily from where he was splinting a shattered finger, "What do we do about the wounded?"

"Carry those who can be moved," Sergei winced as Gazan applied some sort of bruises to the wounds on his neck. "Kill those who can't."

"And the Shi'lassen?" Gazan nodded to the handful of saboteurs who'd survived.

"Them too," Sergei's lip curled in disgust. Not even the goatish Sh'lassen deserved life in an Eldar slave colony, "Nobody gets left behind. Nobody gets taken alive. Nobody. The knife-ears aren't getting that satisfaction."

* * *

"Decks 2, 3, 24, 236, and 404 aft have been boarded," droned the vox-servitor lashed to the great throne, "Decks 2, 3, 24, 236, and 404 aft have been boarded-"

"I know," Sáclair barked tersely at the servitor, smacking it across the face and knocking one of its prosthetic eyes to the floor. "We have a lot of boarders onboard the ship. Thank you for the Throne cursed update."

The Captain's right foot burned in sympathetic agony as he put the Endless Bounty between the Eldar corsair and an Omega Class ship, earning a pulse-laser shot to the engines for his trouble. A troubling warning of potentially overheating power grid 12 zeta flashed across his augmentically enhanced eyes as he fired back on the spindly Eldar craft with his port weapons arrays, crushing the ship's solar sails into dust and fragments.

Centauri warships mobbed the crippled Eldar ship like frenzied sharks, tearing into the wraithbone flesh of it with their Vorchan laser arrays. For a race unaccustomed to fighting those more powerful than themselves, the Centauri took to the new task with impressive fervor.

Saclair accelerated as fast as his engines would permit, moving them up to the redline in a vain attempt to catch up with the Eldar ship. It was like grasping at smoke and whispers; every time he thought he'd managed to isolate which of the afterimages on his sensor array was the true ship, it would turn out to be nothing but another ghostly fake, and he'd have to sacrifice even more fuel to dodge the capitol ship's main guns. Kerrigan's enhanced sensors gave him only a moment's warning, but that was a moment more than his allies would have if the Eldar were able to focus on the weaker ships.

As much as it galled him to admit it, there was no possible way for him to beat the Eldar ship in a stand-up fight. The Endless Bounty wasn't a dedicated warship. His only hope was for the Eldar capitol ship to remain distracted long enough for his allied ships to be able to harry the larger ship into a retreat. The Earth Alliance ships were weak, but their lance batteries would be greatly appreciated.

None of that could happen, however, while the damned Eldar frigates were still able to control the flow of battle. The Eldar frigates were little more than capitol ship weapons mounted on flying frames: they were delicate, almost fragile by Imperial standards, but imbued with a speed that chased the very light of the stars. The frigates did not make easy targets even if they'd been playing fair.

That their pilots were guided by the greater psychic purpose of whatever Farseer witch-king ruled this coven of Eldar went without saying. The already preternaturally fast reflexes of the ship's Captain would likely be informed and aided by the future sight visions of their telepathic cadre. They weaved the paths of fate and foresight to win victories before ever firing a shot.

To the Eye with their foresight. Sáclair would be damned if he couldn't make his own fate.

"Mr. Andrews, I need to prevent the Eldar from moving through the system unimpeded. Their solar sails are giving them too much of an advantage," Sáclair growled as he felt a wing of Vampire hunters attack the underbelly of the Endless Bounty. "And will somebody get these damn fighters off me!"

"We're a bit busy sir," Replied the terse voice of Mr. Andrews between bursts of laser fire. His image was a distorted mess as the camera servitor skull struggled to keep pace with the crewman as he tucked into a roll, dodging the curved blade of an Eldar pirate. He jammed the shotgun into the Eldar Pirate's side, firing twice and expelling the contents of the Eldar's stomach across the wall of the corridor.

A second Eldar pirate came barreling down the corridor only to catch the saw-blade arm of a servitor, cutting the elfish figure's head at the neck. The body, unaware of its death, stumbled another footfall before toppling into a decidedly fleshy heap.

Mr. Andrews swore angrily as he pulled a dagger out of his knee, "Sir they took out the aft command post, and smashed the sensors for the tram. They'll be on you in moments."

Sáclair's eyes bulged with apoplectic rage. The tram that ran between the main bridge and the command posts that lined the spine of the ship was a mark of status aboard the Endless Bounty, it was the ceremonial transport of Sáclair men for time immemorial. They were going to assault him with his own tram. He swallowed his anger and repeated his question in a tone of dangerous calm, "Mr. Andrews, do we have something that could impede those solar sails in the next five minutes? Yes or no?"

"I... I'm not sure sir. If the tertiary firing controls are still manually accessible we could fire a salvo of atomics at the moon. The debris should at least make them think twice about following us through it." Mr. Andrews eyes were slightly out of focus, a minor concussion no doubt. "It might -"

"Do it." Sáclair growled as the floor to the great hall parted, the obsidian tram rising up from the floor with the heralding singing of cherub-servitors and recorded prayers. "And do it now. We're about to suffer a significant drop in pilot concentration."

The tram's doors exploded outward as dozens of heavily armored Eldar swordsmen charged into the great hall. The carapace armor of the ship's security officers provided no protection from the humming obsidian blades of the eldar warriors. Curved and cruel protrusions of bone jutted out from the chins and faces of the warriors, giving them a cruel and bestial facade.

Sáclair watched as the Eldar slaughtered their way through the security guards and lionhearts, psychic-powers making a mockery of the lesser mortal's physical skills. Their bodies twisted and undulated in impossible ways to avoid or absorb what laser-fire did not simply dissipate across the charged energies wreathed across their wraithbone armor.

The ship bucked with the impact of a misplaced shot from an Centauri Primus as Sáclair launched his own ordnance at the massive Eldar warship. His lip curved in satisfaction as he realized that it had managed to do nominal damage to the ship's top wing. His assessment was immediately confirmed by the Eldar's increased frenzy to slaughter his men.

A wing Earth Alliance fleet, led by the _Beijing Beauty_, attacked the Eldar battleship's underbelly, distracting it and giving the _Endless Bounty_ time to break away. That damnable Xinjiang was at least a competent commander even if he was an insufferably thick human being. One couldn't have everything he supposed.

Sáclair counted down from twenty to lower his heart rate, waiting for the swordsmen to walk reach the wide dance floor of the great hall. He cleared his mind, willing his plan to the back of his head behind the protected memory engram implants. The throne was theoretically insulated against psychic intrusions, but with the Eldar one never truly knew if such measures would do more than hinder them.

Even the weakest of Eldar had a prodigious telepathic talent.

"Surrender to us, Mon'kiegh" The Astropathic servitor chained to his throne convulsed, her mouth forced to speak the words of the Eldar approaching him. The controller was likely the lead swordsman, a tall Eldar cloaked in yellow silks above his blue armor who'd paused fighting the Imperials long enough to make eye contact with the servitor. "Surrender, or you will die. It has been foretold."

"You'll pardon me if I don't feel compelled to roll over and die," Sáclair snorted in amusement over the loudspeakers as an eldar pistol pinged off the particle shields enveloping his throne. With a cheeky grin and a gesture unbecoming of the lord of a ship, Sáclair activated the perimeter shields within the dance floor's tiles, trapping the swordsmen within the confines of the ballroom floor. "And I don't exactly feel threatened by you at the moment."

"You think too three-dimensionally, Mon'kiegh," The Eldar effortlessly removed the hand of a lionheart brandishing a chain-blade, grabbing the man's stump and gutting him from navel to nostril with a elegantly curved blade. "This accomplishes nothing. You save no-one."

"Says the man who's currently imprisoned," Sáclair settled back into his throne, glaring menacingly at a servant and snapping his fingers twice. "Boy, if I do not see a pitcher of sweet wine in the next ten seconds I will be very cross."

The child, terrified enough by the Eldar to forget the battlefield prohibition of liquor, rushed off to the Captain's private larder. Just as well, really. It would have been horribly embarrassing to be denied liquor by a servant in front of the enemy.

"You condemn yourself. " The Eldar shook his head, apparently disappointed, "There was still time to change your path, Mon'kiegh."

"I choose my own pathm Eldar," Sáclair bucked forward in his throne and swore as the sensation of a depressurizing section of ship tore into his thigh. He was paying too much attention to the intruders and not enough attention to the battle. He hadn't even considered that the Dilgar ship to his bow might still be a threat, but apparently the devious little predators weren't out of the fight quite yet.

"You listen but only to hear my words. Words are insufficient." The Eldar's voice from the servitor hitched in contemplation, "Mon'kiegh are limited... too limited in language and thought. You need to **hear** my truth.**"**

A jab of psychic inquiry lashed across Sáclair's mind, an overwhelming and ancient presence beating against his thoughts and outright ignoring the psychic dilution of the power field. Thoughts, alien to his own, tried to impose themselves across his own thoughts and memories in indistinct patterns of unknowable emotion and prismatic color.

Sáclair's anti-psychic implants struggled to stave off the attack, forcing his mind to recall irrelevant thoughts and false memories. "Fine, you want to play this that way?" Sáclair bit down hard on the false molar on the right side of his mouth, cracking it open and activating a miniature pressure plate concealed within. "How about this, you knife eared abomination!"

Sáclair knew what came next made it no easier to endure. The supremely illegal implant was one of the worse devices to emerge from the Age of Apostasy. A thumbnail-sized chip implanted at the base of the Captain's skull was a modified version of the standard false memory engram, a single-use chip containing fake memories intended to lure away any intruding psychic - with a twist.

The memories within were the recorded feelings and emotions of those condemned to death at the stake and those undergoing the conversion into servitors. Their pain, their terror, and all of the horrible thoughts to run through their minds would be forced into the attacker's mind as though they were living it at that second.

Unfortunately, it also inflicted the same upon it's bearer.

Sáclair had always imagined it would be the Inquisitor who he unleashed the device upon, but this would have to suffice. A pity, he would have _loved_ to force the Inquisitor to feel the touch of death.

The Eldar's scream of pain and terror was quite satisfying, nearly enough to drown out his own screams of agony as he smashed the Endless Bounty through an Eldar escort ship, breaking the elegant craft's spine across the prow of his own. It was not until the pain abated that he consciously realized that he was screaming or that he'd stopped noticing the sensations of pain caused by ordnance impacts. Double-checking to see that his skin was still attached to his body, Sáclair glared down at the now kneeling Eldar warrior as his acolytes helped him to his feet.

"Had enough, Eldar?"

"So be it Mon'Kiegh," The Eldar touched his chest, running his fingers across a fist sized stone. The gem glowed with unnatural light, bathing his blue armor in blinding white light. The Endless Bounty's Astropaths screamed in shock, their senses overwhelmed by the sudden psychic mandate. Their minds, bound to the logic engines of the ship, projected messages across the great hololith. The same words a thousand times a thousand, "Here, here, it is here."

An soul-stone, a throne begotten soul-stone, the bastard had a beacon for the damned bridge. The Eldar smiled sadly, "We die together Mon'kiegh. I will honor your defiance in my next life."

"You first," Sáclair smashed his fist on the handle of his throne, breaking the gilt paw off the lion and pulling a lever down to the floor. Shards of molten glass and crystal rained down from the ceiling as the concealed plasma cannons unleashed their lethal payloads at the non-humans clustered on the dance floor.

"Mr. Sácomer," Sáclair tapped the vox caster newly implanted beneath his ear. "See about dispatching a cleaning crew to the bridge. I've made a bit of a mess."

* * *

The Shi'lassen rebel transport was advanced, strikingly so. It was no wonder that the rebels had managed to fight the partisans to a stand-still; they were laughably better equipped than their enemies. Throne, they were better equipped than most regiments of Imperial Guardsmen.

The thick carapace armor of their grey-robed host's bodyguards could easily have passed for the armor favored by Imperial Storm Troopers. The slight shimmer of ionized air around the armor plates just hinted at some sort of energy disruption technology to dissipate the plasma weaponry favored by the Earth Alliance. Their own laser carbines were of distinctly alien make, though if Cairn's unwavering fixation upon the weapons was any indication, of a quality worthy of note.

By comparison, their guide V'clath's filthy blue uniform and secondhand phased-plasma rifle seemed almost quaint. The hoary goat-man cradled his own weapon, apparently terrified of the rebel's shaved faces and missing horns. He would reach up and tap his own horns every minute or so, just to affirm that they were still in place.

"Where are you taking us?" Daul queried as the transport zoomed across the battlefield, dodging Dilgar artillery strikes with agility he would not have expected from the lopsided Sh'lassen construct.

"You will see soon enough, fatebringer. The time for secrets will soon be at an end." The robed rebel rubbed at his chin, a gesture clearly born of a time when he still had a beard. "I promise no harm will come to you. That is not my place."

"Oye vey. Do you really have to keep up the 'cryptic guide' thing?" Susan interjected. "I get enough of that from Hilder."

The robed rebel snorted, shaking his snout in amusement, "There is no riddle. No secret. I simply do not know the answer. I was not meant to know."

"If course you don't." The Earthforce officer rested her forehead in the palm of her hand. "Do you have a name that we should be calling you?"

"He is Kg'Shar. Head of the order of Akab. Lord of the third circle," V'clath brayed angrily. "Architect of the rebellion."

"Remind me why we aren't shooting him?" Hissed Shan, "I feel like we should be shooting him."

"I will die." Kg'Shar whinnied morosely in English. "But not before finishing my duty. Not till you have met – " The tank bucked hard to the right, the booming crash of artillery rounds colliding with the polarized hull thundering within. " – Gornak, report!"

The Sh'lassen driver brayed and whinnied in the Sh'lassen tongue, a goatish mix of fear and excitement in each word. Daul looked to V'clath expectantly. "Well?"

"The new ones, er – Eldar – They've broken through the Sh'lassen defensive lines. They're in the outer reaches of the fortress city itself." V'clath's ears twitched in fear as another shell burst behind the tank close enough to deafen the passengers briefly.

"They haven't breached the spire." Kg'Shar shouted over the ringing noise in their ears as he closed his eyes in an effort to focus himself. "The Earth Alliance is doing a serviceable job of attacking the _Alai_ Warriors. The _Ceifulgaithann_ continue to harass the Narn for now, and hopefully we'll be able to sneak through the fortress without that damnable giant of the_Fir Caurifeltaking_ note of us."

"You're remarkably well informed about the Eldar." Daul eyed Kg'Shar speculatively. "As well as the Imperium. Metzik Gothic is not well known, even in the Imperium."

"I only know the phrases I used in greeting," Kg'Shar shrugged, "I was told to memorize them. I've been practicing them daily for two years now in anticipation of today."

"Told? Told by whom?" Daul shot a confused look at Susan. "Are the Sh'lassen precognitive?"

"Not to my knowledge. But I'm no expert in human genetics." Susan shrugged. "It would probably have been flagged by the Psi Corps if they were. They don't tend to let stuff like that slip by."

"Come again?" Shan hissed in shock. "The Sh'lassen are human?"

"Of course we're human," grunted the annoyed V'clath. "As human as you are."

"I don't recall hooves being part of the package!" Shan retorted.

"We altered our genome in the early days of Sh'lassen to survive the inhospitable mountainsides. It was a move of desperation to survive." Kg'Shar grunted, "It was a mistake."

"It is our heritage." brayed V'clath. "We left Earth to live as we pleased, to be what we wished. We thrived."

"By the throne. Beastmen!" Daul had never personally encountered homo sapiens variatus, a blanket classification for those human populations who'd ceased to be recognizable from their human origins. The Adeptus Arbites were careful to restrict the so called "beastmen" to the three thousand prescriled settlement worlds, often the worlds their particular mutant strain originated from. "How?"

"The methods of our ancestors were... necessary for survival. For a time. But we must seek a cure, to restore ourselves to purity. To what we once were." Kg'Shar ran a hand over his shaved head. "I will never be pure, but perhaps my children and grandchildren might be."

"How can you do that?" Susan quirked a single brow. "I was under the impression that you'd lost the technology to manipulate the genome. The Triumvirate destroyed it after the Earth Alliance showed up to prevent them from using it to change them back."

"It was not time. The bargain has not been met." The tank turned abruptly as an Eldar spear sunk into the side, piercing the hull before zooming back to its wielder. Its whistling psychic cry hissed nearly as loud as the noxious gasses pouring into the transport.

"Cairn! See to it!" Daul coughed as his rebreather struggled to compensate for the sulfurous gasses. Twittering irritably as he welded the hole shut, the Skitarii saw to mending the tear.

"The _Alai_ are more formidable than I expected. More formidable than I'd believed possible." Hacking in pain Kg'Shar clutched a medallion around his neck, a silvery jade bug that seemed passingly familiar to Daul, though he couldn't place it. "We're going to have to travel through the depths."

"There is no possible way that I'm going to like whatever it is your going to say next." Susan massaged her forehead, "But I suppose someone has to ask. Why are the depths?"

"Ancient caves beneath the battlefield of Matok. Deep, secret. Not walked since we first came to the planet," V'clath shuddered in fear his as his hackles quivered. "Dangerous, very dangerous. They lead from Matok to most of the planet."

"And they were not part of your battle plans?" Shan whispered confusion.

"They were." Kg'Shar snorted, "But the beasts that dwell below would not have an intrusion. We do not belong."

"Sent tanks. Sent troops. " V'clath scratched at his muzzle with a taloned finger. "None came back. Trenches avoid the caves. Anything that gets too deep doesn't come back."

"And you want to take us through there?" The Earth Alliance native muttered angrily, checking that her pistols were properly loaded. "Are you insane?"

"It is that or try to enter through the main gate," Kg'Shar shrugged. "I would prefer to avoid the area currently overrun with _Alai_, and we have certain... knowledge that the partisan forces does not."

"What aren't you telling me?" Daul allowed balefire to flicker in the eye sockets of his helmet in subtle threat.

Kg'Shar's bodyguards rose their firearms in alarm, but stood down at a gesture from their master. He shook his head disappointedly, "Inquisitor, I am not telling you volumes of our history and knowledge. You have let your curiosity guide you this far, have faith."

"My faith is limitless, my patience is merely human." Daul retorted. "How do you know that we will survive the depths?"

"For the same reason I knew your tongue," Kg'Shar smiled, an oddly wolfish gesture. "I was told."

"By whom?"

"We are a blessed people Inquisitor, blessed beyond imagining. He guides us in all things, leading us on the path to order and perfection. He is eternal, glorious. He has lived since men were but apes in the forest and he will continue long after we've died." Kg'Shar sighed reverently. "Some say he strode the plains of ancient Earth before the dawn of man."

"Of course he did." The Inquisitor replied dryly. Daul hated dealing with cultists: they thought in circles and never gave a straight answer. And nothing was more insufferable than a cultist witnessing the fulfillment of prophecy, they outright refused to talk in anything resembling normal speech. Nothing but "it was forseen" and "so wills it be," phrases as meaningless as they were roundabout.

Daul smiled as he probed towards Kg'Shar's mind, probing his surface thoughts. Not strongly enough for him to realize that it was being done, as even the weakest of minds would not miss an outright intrusion, but just enough to get a vague impression of what lay within his mind. "Does your mysterious benefactor have a name?"

"We do not speak his name. We are unworthy, but he has requested that yoube at his side and witness his glory." replied the rebel, a flash of a two meter high figure flitting to the forefront of his mind. Thick gold-gilded gauntlets and a bright red cape waved about the massive figure sitting upon an obsidian throne as he watched the world progress on a bank of holographic monitors, his face wrapped in opulent silk to conceal his identity. He was the eternal guardian of Sh'lassen.

He knew that armor and knew patterns on the robe, but for the life of him he couldn't say why. Yet he had to know.

He did... _THRONE ALMIGHTY he did_

No... no it **couldn't** be...Throne help him, but he had to know.

The tank's engines cut off, the thunderous grunting rumble grinding down to silence as the doors hissed open to the noxious air of Matok billowing into the confined space of the compartment. Men and Sh'lassen clamped re-breathers across their faces, the elongated snouts of the Imperial re-breathers giving the odd impression that all of them had the elongated snouts of their goat-like guides.

The three story ziggurat was pitch black, surrounded by great spired pylons stretching out to the sky at seemingly random intervals from the ground. It bore the all the signs of having been once a site of great ritual, though the centuries of disuse between the extinction of the xenos race that had built it and the coming of the Sh'lassen had worn it down to a wreck of its former glory. Cracks and pock marks scored across the thick granite face; weapons-fire and natural hazards had done little to preserve its history. Leading down from the wide stone plaza upon which the tank had parked was a winding set of weatherbeaten stairs, leading down from the platform and into the depths beneath the ancient temple.

A tendril of familiar psychic presence touched his mind and Daul smiled behind his mask. Susan wanted to talk in private. Outside of their lessons it wasn't something she was inclined to do, but that she even could do it was a sign of how much she'd come.

"I **really **don't like that we're doing this."

"Just keep your weapon ready and your mind clear," Daul waved a quick command to Cairn, ordering the Skitarii to keep within mechandrite range of their bodyguards. "When they betray us I want to be ready."

"You're **planning **on being betrayed?" Susan eyed the massive obsidian ziggurat that Kg'Shar was leading them towards. "You're letting them take us into the cavern of certain death **knowing** that they're going to betray us?"

"Of course I am," Daul shrugged. "I'm an Inquisitor."

Daul did not have to look back at the Russian to feel her rolling her eyes in his direction as they followed their hirsute rebel guide past pictograph-covered pylons and down the stairway at the mouth of the ziggurat, down into the bowels of the unknown.

* * *

Tonya screamed as the half-breed hound lunged for her exposed leg, its gaping maw yawning open with obvious purpose. She bashed the creature across its snout with the shock-maul given to her by Danzig, crushing its head inwards in a burst of force from the glowing power fields wrapped around the heavy flail.

"I'd better get a freaking Pulitzer for this." She yelled into her camera, "Twice!"

Rough hands grabbed her round the waist and pulled her into a comforting embrace as Hakam Danzig pulled her back from the window. "Stay down!"

"Sir," Sgt. Hamman pointed his flamethrower at the gaping aperture, a gout of searing hot flames pouring from its nozzle into the pack of half-breed hounds. The unnatural hounds screamed and howled, their muscle and sinew cooking under the stream of napalm. He ripped a grenade off his combat webbing, tossing it down the passageway and collapsing the entrance to the bunker.

"They're getting close," Danzig growled, his arms tightening around her waist unconsciously and pressing Tonya up against him. "Too close."

He seemed to consciously realize his closeness to Tonya, reddening as he let her go, "Are you unharmed, Miss Wallace?"

"No Colonel. I'm fine," Tonya brushed the dirt from the front of her uniform as best she could, "Just a bit messier than I'd like."

"Good, but for Throne's sake stay away from the windows." Danzig growled, his tone of command sending shivers up Tonya's spine. "Ashak, how screwed are we?"

"From the Throne to the Eye sir," The baby-faced Lionheart swore angrily as he stared into some sort of handheld computer. "We've been cut off from the rest of the Lionhearts by the Eldar flyers. Jamal's squad tried to sneak around to the North and give us some fire support, but they ran into more of the burrowers."

"Any word on the Belzafest artillery?" Danzig tapped his earpiece twice and winced as it spat static back into his ear loud enough for Tonya to hear it. He ripped the malfunctioning radio out of his ear, swearing furiously, "Throne cursed Eldar sorcery! Does nothing go to plan?"

"It gets better sir," yelled Sóntian from where he'd perched with his sniper rifle, staring down his scope at the battlefield beyond. "We've got incoming!"

"How many?" Danzig scanned the room, in a gesture Tonya recognized. He was taking a quick study of his men, trying to get a sense for how the thirty soldiers were doing.

"I don't know," He shook his head. "They're using some sort of illusion to distract my eyes, and I can't focus on any of them for more than a few seconds."

"Let me have a look," Tonya pointed to her camera drones. "I want to get a look at these Eldar anyway."

"Do it." Danzig nodded.

Tonya tapped the side of her head, activating the implant in her eye linked to her camera drones. She shut them tight, having two disparate images playing on her eyes would rapidly cause her to feel vertigo. She ran her palm over the remote in the palm of her glove and one of her silver robots flew upwards towards the edge of the bunker and out the window.

The rocky landscape of Matok whipped past at break neck speed as she navigated towards where Sóntian had been staring. A two meter tall wall of light and color erupted from the ground some hundred yards from the bunker, covering a kilometer wide section of hillside from view.

Well, blocking anyone who couldn't fly that is. Her drone shot up into the air, rising some hundred feet and focusing on the now exposed Eldar. The slender blue armored men labored around obvious weapons platforms, their long-ribbed barrels terminating in a thick, bulbous muzzle. Even at this distance she could see the air distorting and vibrating around the tip of the barrel.

"There are large cannons pointed at us," Tonya swallowed. "Each one is manned by two men, they're – they're firing!"

The earth quaked as a thunderous burst of sound and color collided with the bunker, punching the southern wall inward in a deadly hail of razor sharp fragments of stone. Tonya screamed as one of the Lionhearts burst like a balloon, his flesh shaken apart by the Alien artillery.

Danzig mouthed "Run," grasping her by her wrist, his frenzied command silenced by the thunderous ringing in her ears. She reached up to the right side of her head, the sticky feeling of fresh blood seeping from a fresh wound coating her fingers.

The Lionhearts fled in all directions, scattering as far as possible to deny the Eldar weapons a target. Tonya struggled to keep up with Danzig, the soldier half-dragging her along as they rushed into cover. Her ears recovered just enough to hear the whining keen of the weapons batteries as they opened up on a trio of Lionhearts. The air shimmered and shifted around them in a tornado of shifting forces, shaking the earth beneath them as it ripped them to shreds. Tonya gaped, too terrified to scream as the men were rendered down to their component atoms. A soupy mess of blood and fragmented bone was all that remained, pattering onto the sulfuric rocks with a dull hiss.

"Vibro-cannons," Yelled Danzig loud enough for her to hear him over the rining in her ears. "Eldar artillery. We've got to get to – get down!"

He pulled her to him, shielding her body with his own as the stream shot past them, kicking up razor sharp fragments of rock and annihilating another Lionheart who strayed too far into view. He screamed in pain as a knife-sharp shard of rock sliced his cheek, exposing the muscle below.

Tonya squinted her eyes shut, focusing on the camera still hovering above the battlefield and activated its emergency beacon. It was nothing more than a bright light and a broad spectrum SOS, but it made for one hell of a distraction as she flew the camera straight into the leftmost gunner's helmet.

The astonished gun crews briefly stopped firing, distracted by the shocked scream of their compatriot and the bright light and motion of the robot. It was the meagerest of distractions, but one that the Lionhearts did not squander. As a confused Eldar grabbed the drone, staring at the robot contemptuously, his head exploded in a burst of gore.

Sóntian whooped in victory as the Lionhearts peppered the hillside in laser fire, forcing the Eldar to take cover behind their own artillery as a bright purple Centauri tank column hovered across the battlefield, interposing themselves between the Lionhearts and the Eldar.

A centauri medic hopped off the back of the lead tank as the Centauri armor opened fire on the Eldar artillery, "Are you injured?"

Danzig batted the alien medic away, speaking through a mouthful of his own blood, "I'm fine."

A tank collapsed, crushed under the weight of the Eldar artillery as its internal fuel supplies ignited. Ruptured sections of hull flew in all directions, flaming projectiles crashing to the ground with an earth-shuddering crash.

"Sir I really should see to that wound," The medic pulled a device from his belt.

Danzig grabbed the medic by the throat, "Save the dying first."

"Yes sir," The choking medic hissed. "Right away sir."

"I assume you're the officer in charge?" A haughty Centauri in bright white carapace armor with an immaculate set of blue trousers sidled up to them, exiting his transport with the same casual boredom of a man walking to work. He shook slightly as the tank fired its main weapon, particle beams searing into the gun batteries and destroying two platforms.

"Get down you fool!" Barked Danzig as a second tank was hit by the artillery, the screams of it's crew punctuated by the sound of igniting fuel.

The Centauri winced at the noise, "Hiding from that artillery doesn't seem to do much to protect me. And all things considered, I would prefer not to be cramped. Tanks tend to be dismally narrow."

"You're going to die you fool."

"No, I don't think I shall," The Centauri smiled and looked at his watch, his canines tapping jauntily against his lower lip. "Whatever else may be said about the Narn, they are masters of ungentlemanly warfare."

Six Da'Va'Korrak infantry vehicles crested the ridge behind the Eldar position, disgorging a hundred screaming Narn onto the ridge. A few seconds of plasma-fire flashed across the ridge before the distant shouts of victory let Tonya knew they'd succeeded in taking out the vibro-cannons.

"Efficient savages," the Centauri chuckled. "It's a nice change of pace to see them fighting someone else."

"I wouldn't expect you to work with Narn." Tonya shouted over the ringing in her ears. Hopefully the sound guy could get some usable material out of her two remaining cameras in post. "I'd have thought that the Narn-Centauri problem would be too much."

"There isn't any Narn-Centauri problem on this battlefield Miss -" He let the sound hang in the air till Tonya provided "Wallace" so that he would continue, "Yes, miss Wallace. There simply isn't time to waste on that. To use your history, 'we must hang together or we shall most assuredly hang separately.' There are even GROPO stragglers somewhere in the column that survived the first push. By the Maker, I'm sure that the poor bastards are looking for some payback."

"I wouldn't get too excited about your victory," Danzig slapped a fresh power-pack into his rifle and shoving Tonya into the open Centauri tank. "Incoming, six o-clock high!"

"What are you talking abo – " The Centauri's head separated from his shoulders as an Eldar jet-biker swooped past, swinging a curved halberd with expert precision. The Eldar jetbikes swooped and swam through the sky with effortless aggression, cat-calling and jeering as they past.

The Eldar jetbikes set upon the Narn like hawks upon field mice, screeching angrily as they gleefully swooped into their prey, shooting, stabbing and generally cavorting in their murderous sport. A pair of bikes flew past a Narn at opposite angles, catching him with the chains hanging off their bikes and quartering him.

She did not have abundant time to spare in sympathetic horror, though, as the jetbikes hadn't arrived alone. Lumbering over the ruins of the destroyed bunker, the half-breeds and hounds poured down into the valley, heedless of their own safety. The monsters whooped and waved their tentacles in victory as the Centauri tanks opened fire.

Spurned on by the carnage, the half-breeds eagerly climbed over the broken bodies of their compatriots, using the craters and mounds of charnel as cover as they returned fire with their own laser rifles and looted PPGs. The Centauri commandos climbed out of their tanks, firing energy rifles at the many-legged hounds as they fed upon the dead and dying.

Heavy footfalls echoed on the roof of Tonya's tank as a tentacle whipped down into the transport, decapitating the Centauri Guardsman next to her and grabbing her about the neck before she had the chance to scream. Her hand grasped for the shock-maul, blood soaked hands too slippery to grasp the smooth leather around the hilt as her body yanked up and out.

The many eyed half-breed stank of blood and its own filthy mucus, its scaled and mottled fingers stroking the side of her face with its long bony protrusions. It spat into her face and she felt a powerful wooziness coming over her, limbs not responding properly to her brain. It leaned in close to her, leaning it to her ear and whispering "mine" as it ripped the body armor covering her chest open with a razor sharp talon, yanking the carapace open and exposing the white cotton shirt beneath.

The creature howled in arousal as it grunted "MINE" and started to remove its own filthy uniform. Oh God, why hadn't she just stayed in the camp with the General? What had she been thinking? She tried to cry out for Danzig, knowing that the soldier was just meters away.

"No use, is mine!" The creature dropped its trousers, exposing himself to her and leering down. "Mine forever."

His aroused smile abruptly became a screaming yowl of agony as a brilliant blue burst of phased-plasma collided with his groin, castrating him with a explosion of boiling flesh. An Earthforce Gropo planted a boot in the mewling creature's face, caving it in before firing twice into the creature's chest.

"Frag off, jackass," growled the GROPO woman's voice. "We aren't yours."

"Stonking hell, Private Druman." barked a gruff voiced Sgt. Major as he helped Tonya to her feet. "Remind me not to piss you off."

Tonya mouthed wordlessly, trying to comprehend what had just happened - and what might have.

"Come on, sarge," a massive black Gropo hissed, "You can congratulate Dodger for a good job later. We've got to get this column moving now before the knife-ear flyers are finished with the Narn and coming for us!"

As she clutched the severed parts of her flak armor together inside the locked transport Tonya Wallace realized that it would probably have been best to just have stayed in camp with General Franklin.

No footage was worth dying.

* * *

Osma counted down from twenty, clearing his mind of fear. They could sense fear or pain, the whoresons could sense any strong emotion and would track it like a shark in bloodied waters. The knew where he was already; he had to assume that at all times he was fighting deaf and blind.

That suited him just fine. He knew the Endless Bounty better than anyone save the Captain. There was no need for him to see anything. He knew where they were, and where they would be heading.

Starships had a limited number of potential targets depending on what an attacker wanted. Pirates would go for the engines or cargo hold: they'd be looking to offload as much freight as they could manage in a short time. Most enemies would be heading for the shields or weapons control, looking to defang the great Lion of the Stars.

Eldar were different. When Eldar corsairs attacked, they wanted slaves.

Supposedly there was a difference between the different Eldar clans, but Osma knew better. He knew their cruelty all too well: the only good knife-ear was a dead one, and he was eager to spread some truly great Eldar across theBounty's bulkheads.

The drum-fed boltgun in his hands was heavier than his preferred weapon, the shotgun, but when it came to Eldar even piercing the hull was a small price to pay for killing the witch-kin warriors. He was not supposed to have the weapon, as it was technically archived evidence, but a master-crafted bolt-rifle was far beyond the limits of his operating budget. Reloading the weapon cost more than he'd earn in a year. Five drums full of the explosive projectile bolt-shells jangled softly against the carapace of his leg, muffled by their cloth wrappings.

He swiped his hand twice across his visor, wordlessly telling his four man security team to move. Kurtz took the lead, the worn leather soles of his Belzafest-make leather boots barely making a noise as he crept forward into the market on Deck 236. His feel made soft splashes in the pools of blood and organs.

Osma's stomach buckled at the corpses. The normally serene plaza was like something out of a nightmare. Men, women, and children lay upon the floor, slaughtered like grox on a feast day. It hadn't been done cleanly either; the odd lacerations and smeared blood beneath the corpses indicated that they'd died neither quickly nor quietly.

"No footprints," Kursan waved at the puddles all around them. "Thirty dead, and it might as well have been a ghost."

"Eldar sorcery," whispered Kurtz. "They've vanished."

"No," Osma hisses as droplet of blood dripped down from the ceiling, landing in the wide pool of offal draining into the sewers, "They're above us!"

Osma spun his bolter towards the eaves of the vaulted ceilings, firing the supersonic explosive into the long face of a distant winged gargoyle. The garyoyle leapt at the last second, howling and alien battlecry as it spread its iridescent wings. It shouldered a rifle and fired, catching Aknsesh between the eyes.

The dead man's body collapsed to the ground as the security team rushed for cover as a dozen winged figures took to the skies, swooping gleefully about the promenade as they unleashed all sorts of merry hell. Osma slammed his blast visor shut as a dozen fist sized segmented pieces of wraithbone fell to the ground, exploding in a burst of psychicly enhanced pyrotechnics and sound. Flames licked at his carapace, scorching his exposed back.

He turned and fired on automatic, ten bolter shots zipping into the skies. They were moving too fast to target properly but within the relative bottleneck of the promenade's vaulted ceiling one only needed to aim so much. He caught one of the winged warriors with a shell to the chest, collapsing the Eldar's rib cage and removing his head and shoulders.

Kurtz and Kurzan tried to keep the Eldar from getting into close combat with sporadic bursts from their combat shotguns, peppering any Eldar who strayed too close with adamantium ball-bearings, but it wasn't enough. Swearing furiously as he tired to get a bearing on the swooping eldar, Osma pulled the trigger twice. The explosive rockets flew across the room, exploding against a bench and a display of pickled eggs, missing the Eldar warrior entirely. The blue stream of flames from his wings cast a predatory light upon the room as he leapt upon Officer Htor.

Htor screamed in agony as the Eldar gutted him with a razor sharp dagger, grabbing his intestines in one hand as he flew back up to the ceiling. The poor bastard lived long enough to scream as he was lifted from the ground, pulled up by the slippery rope extending from his chest, before the Eldar tossed him back to the ground.

"We have to move!" Osma barked. "Advance to deck 236, corridor 564 G."

"Sir," Aknesh swallowed fearfully, "That's on the other side of the market."

"Just do what I say, cadet, and you might live to see tomorrow." Osma fired another round and swore as it clicked empty. Ripping the drum out of his rife he slapped a new one in, ducking as a scintillating red beam sliced across his shoulder, cracking the cadet in the windpipe. The young man fell down, stone dead.

"To the eye with this," Osma growled, making the sign of the Aquilla, "**Move!**"

Osma fired his entire clip into the ceiling as they sprinted the hundred meters, harried by Eldar lasfire. The bolt rounds missed their targets, the slender flyers too quick to be hit by such haphazard marksmanship, but the explosions of promethium and shrapnel forced them to duck and doge quickly to avoid hitting the walls or each other. Sparks flew from their razor sharp wings, psychokinetic flames wreathing their path.

Kurtz tripped over the corpse of a large man, the local butcher if memory served. His foot caught on the man's exposed ribcage, upending him and exposing his back. Osma reached to help him up, flinching as his back split under a curved Eldar scimitar. He fired at the winged Eldar, reacting on instinct rather than conscious thought, catching the xenos warrior at the thigh and ripping the man's leg apart. The astonished Eldar hovered on its pinioned wraithbone wings, staring at its seeping wound in shock as Osma smashed him in the face with the butt of his rifle.

The witch-man howled with pain, reaching out with his hand and catching Osma in the chest with a burst of telekinesis, which flung him across the room to collide with Kursan. The two officer's tumbled down corridor 564 G, ass over elbows.

"Are we dead, sir?" Kursan groaned, extricating himself from his superior officer.

"Not yes lad' not yet. Dyin' hurts less," Osma coughed, wincing as he stood up. At least one of his ribs was cracked, possibly more. "Throne!"

"Sir." Kursan shoved Osma to the left, firing down the corridor. Osma grunted in pain, both emotional and physical, as he watched the young man's face and legs dissolve under Eldar laser-fire.

"Knife-eared sons of bitches!" Osma snarled as he grabbed a frag grenade off his belt and heaved it down the corridor as he pulled the emergency lever to the blast doors, shutting off the passageway from the marketplace. "Cold hearted witchkin, I'll kill you for that."

He tapped his earpiece, staring at the faint glowing redness behind the bulkhead. The Eldar were using their laser-rifles to cut through the door. "Osma to deck chief Enginseer for deck 236. I need the Enginseer for deck 236."

"Speaking," Replied the slow drone of a tech-priest's mechanical voicebox.

"I need the promenade's on deck 236 to immediately initiate containment procedure Alpha-two-six-six." The red light grew brighter, small rivulets of molten metal rolling down to the floor.

"I detect no hazard." The priest replied in emotionless monotony.

"Just do it." Osma snarled. "Authorization code Osma K-G-0-10-Red-Red-Pink."

"If you insist," The priest replied. "May the Omnissiah's fury be upon them."

The promenade of deck 236 was, like all parts of the ship, a multipurpose area housing all manner of necessary systems safety measures and necessarily capillaries for the functionality of the Endless bounty. Of particular interest was a release valve for the a civilian promethium supply.

Five thousand gallons of promethium burst from the ceiling, dousing the room and covering the Eldar therein. The chief of security indulged in a sadistic smile as screams of pain loud enough to be heard through the bulkhead echoed down the corridor. "Burn, you bastards. May the Warp eat your miserable excuses for souls." He breathed raggedly as the emotional tumult of the past few minutes caught up with him; young Kursan's death had affected him more than he'd expected.

His ribs burned in agony and he had to steady himself upon the wall. He wasn't as young as he used to be. "Regroup," He exhaled slowly, trying not to agitate his chest. "It's time to regroup. I need to get to a – to a Medicus..."

The Eldar attacks on the civilian populations had been terrifying, but superficial. Ten deaths here, another thirty there: none of the attacks were serious on their own, but if they were herding the crew of the Bounty while drawing security to traps, it could only mean that they were plotting some sort of decisive strike.

"Throne of Terra," He whispered. There would be hundreds of people heading for the medical centers, the wounded and the dying. Perfect targets for the Eldar.

Osma forced himself past the pain and ran, leaping past repair crews and dodging servitor constructs as he headed for the nearest transport tube, hopping in and smashing the activation rune for deck 40. The chief Medicus, Faest Nor, would be irreplaceable, as would any officers currently undergoing treatment. Killing any one of them would cripple the ship as efficiently as destroying a reactor core: the Endless Bounty could not be properly crewed without proper augmentic implantation.

He shoved his key-card into the slot beneath the activation runes, pressing the large button and saying "Speed safeties overridden, authorization Osma-Beta-2-2-8."

Osma regretted the decision almost instantly as the lift, no longer slowed by the limit of human comfort, rocketed upwards at its maximum speed. Osma hit the floor, the centrifugal forces too strong for him to even lift his arms or legs as the automated voice of the lift's machine spirit struggled to keep up with the rapid ascent.

It stopped with alarming immediacy, flinging Osma's body to the ceiling and back to the ground, further injuring Osma's already mangled ribs. Tears welled in the security chief's eyes as he lifted himself up, stumbling out onto the nightmare that was deck 40.

The Eldar were already there. A score of wraith-bone clad figures were dug in, firing down the corridor at a barrier erected by ship's security. Firing at his men, his men. Osma's blood boiled as he bellowed, "For the Emperor!" at the astonished soldiers.

Osma cracked the Eldar corsair in front of the lift across the head with his shock-maul, collapsing the alien's face into his skull. Osma pulled the trigger of his bolt-rifle with the other hand, forcing the Eldar's two compatriots to leap in either direction as Osma barreled past them. He charged down the wide corridor, hoping against hope that the men behind the barrier did not mistake him for the enemy.

Razor-sharp discs whizzed past him, plinking off his carapace as he leapt the barrier and landed hard upon the ground. He lay on the metal bulkhead for a few moments, breathing heavily, before a firm set of hands lifted him up.

"Up with you, sir, we've work to do. 'If you can't be bothered to remember the safety procedures in my mission briefings you won't survive long on this ship,' " Sgt. Freidrich's amiable voice chided in a friendly imitation of Osma's own dull growl. "The Endless Bounty is a treacherous mistress: you disrespect her for a second and she'll leave you crippled, killed, or worse."

"I'll show you treacherous, you insolent little shite," Osma growled paternally. "What's our situation?"

"The situation is that we're fragged sir." Fredrich fired twice at the Eldar warriors, ducking as a swarm of razor discs flew past his ears. "We're overextended, and I can't move anyone from this position or we'll be overrun. Mammud is fighting back a squad of the heavy armored ones in the starboard atrium."

"What about Yang's squad?" Osma squinted through the smoke, firing a bolter shot into the exposed arm of an Eldar warrior. The creature screeched and danced out again into the open passageway, directly into the path of Osma's next bolter shell. The scarred security chief grunted in satisfaction as bits of Eldar pattered off the decking.

"Protecting the entrance to the upper decks. We can't afford to risk them getting to the officer's families and private residences. The family bodyguards can only do so much." Freidrich swore agrily as his second-in-command took three shuriken to the abdomen, the razor sharp blades passing through one side of the man and out the other. "No! Ajax!"

"Why aren't the internal defenses active? Where are the combat servitors?" There should have been dozens of them there by now.

"Deck 38, sir. They're down there with Tuul fighting some sort of Eldar robots. The Magos is pissed that they're poking holes in the ship's hull." He shuddered, "Sir you do not want those things to get up here. They've got some sort of cannon that just makes whatever it's pointed at disappear in shadow."

"There has to be some way that we can help the people in the med bay," Osma barked in irritation.

"I suggest praying sir," Fredrich replied sadly, "At this point it's in the Emperor's hands."

* * *

The caves beneath the great ziggurat were elaborately carved rather than naturally formed. Unnaturally smooth walls formed a perfect half circle above the raised path leading towards the fortress of Matok, illuminated by faintly luminescent green moss. Regularly placed apertures in the walls led down into shadowy pits and hidden rooms, most of them full of the strange skittering sounds of massive insects.

Susan stayed to the center of the group, trying to put the Inquisitor and his retinue between herself and whatever it was that lurked in the depths. Somehow the still and sterile emptiness of the caves scared her more than the battlefield above. Dust and moss kicked down from the ceiling as artillery rocked the hillside, a passing reminder of the carnage above.

The Kroot hissed, its yellow eyes narrowed speculatively as it leaned low to whisper into Susan's ear, "Goat-men are not scared. Excited but not scared."

"They've been here before?" Susan speculated.

"Or are foolish enough not to fear," crooned the hunter. "Vira'capac fears."

Susan raised an eyebrow speculatively, "I didn't think Kroot felt fear."

"Not fear without reason." The warrior's nostril's flared. "This place has no scent. None. There are no animals here, nothing but that moss."

Cairn, apparently eavesdropping with his augmentic senses, turned and nodded once with an affirmative warble. There was something deeply wrong with this place: there was no presence to it. Since Daul had started working with her on her own psychic powers, Susan had started to gain a measure of ambient empathy. She could sense the mood of a room without trying, feeling the subtle rhythms of life that made up existence.

A room absorbed some of the people who were in it, like wet sand kept the impression of feet. Even insects had some psychic 'footprint' that they left behind. Daul had once blindfolded her and made her trace the flight path of a fly. But even as she expanded her senses there was nothing in the caves, nothing except the Inqusitor's retinue and four Sh'lassen.

But if nothing was in the cave, then what was making those skittering noises? What was it that kept just flitting out of view, moving in the darkness of the adjoining rooms?

"This is a dark place," V'cath whinnied nervously, "This is a place where the Nightmare bringers and their shadows fought the Nameless Gods."

"Yes," Kg'Shar smiled cryptically. "It dates back to first War of Shadows."

The Inquisitor eyed the Sh'lassen, "What is the War of Shadows?"

"A battle of great importance from before the dawn of mankind." V'cath whet his lips and tapped his teeth together. "Not much is known. Only that in the time before time, the nameless gods were attacked by the Shadow Gods in the battle for the skies."

"It's allegory," Susan interjected. "The Sh'lassen adopted the former residents of Matok as their gods when they used their technology to alter the human genome. It's mostly interpretation of what pictographs remained. The original Sh'lassen used remarkably few written records. The aliens – "

"Gods," Kg'Shar cut in angrily, stopping to turn and point an angry finger at Susan. "The Namless and honored Gods who cast the devils of shadow from this realm. You will treat them with the proper respect."

"Cairn," Daul said conversationally. "If our guide does not stop blaspheming in front of me, please shoot him. I'd prefer a headshot, but bolt-round to the chest should suffice."

Kg'Shar's guards brayed angrily, raising their weapons and stopping in shock as they slipped from their hands with a wave of Daul's wrist. Daul picked the weapons up with his augmentic hand, tilting his head jauntily as he said, "I can accept that the Sh'lassen are abhuman. I can accept that the Sh'lassen are products of xenos tampering with the human genome. But if you dare to silence my apprentice for not worshiping xenos, I shall be forced to kill you."

"You will come to Matok," Kg'Shar brayed irritatedly. "It has been seen that you will stand there at my side!"

Daul raised his plasma rifle and pointed it at one of Kg'Shar's bodyguards, "Was it seen that they return to Matok as well?"

Kg'Shar whined softly in defeat, "Very well, Inquisitor. I will ignore this blas – this incident. Now if you'd be so kind as to return the –" Daul smashed the weapons in his mailed fist. " – rifles."

"I do not negotiate with traitors Kg'Shar. " Daul replied sending a tendril of thought to Susan that echoed in her mind as she caught a motion out of the corner of her eye, "_Now Susan._"

As Kg'Shar's first bodyguard reached into his vest for a pistol, Susan found herself reacting before she'd even consciously registered the threat. She reached out with her hand and focused her own internal reserve of power to a single focused point on the bodyguard's body. A line of psychic-flame shot out of her eyes, connecting with the Sh'lassen's hand and severing it at the wrist as he pulled his pistol from its holster.

The goat-man barely had time to realize that he was in pain before Cairn shot him through the chest with a bolter, collapsing the man's rib cage and purging most of his organs. The second brayed in horror, reaching for a combat knife as a burst of superheated plasma melted his face and skull.

Daul lowered his arm, shaking it slightly to re-adjust his cape as he stared at Kg'Shar, "Make no mistake, you are my prisoner. I am not yours."

"They were ready to die. As am I." Kg'Shar stated, sounding less sure of himself than before. "But I will not int– "

"Has been foreseen," Susan interjected. "We know already. Has it been foreseen how long it will take to get there? We've been down here for an hour now."

Kg'Shar narrowed his eyes hatefully before scrunching them shut, breathing deeply and saying, "Not long now."

The passageway widened, reaching a huge spherical room honeycombed with circular openings heading in every direction. The path bridged the kilometer wide sphere, leading to a raised stone platform wide enough for thirty men to walk abreast, centered with a crystal plinth in the center that glowed a deep red.

The skittering sounds of insects grew deafening, chittering clacks echoing out of every passageway leading to the sphere. It was like the center of a giant hive. Kg'Shar hobbled forward over the uneven steps leading up to the plinth, muttering angrily in the Sh'lassen language.

"Do we want to know what he's saying?" Susan queried.

"No." V'cath responded. "No you really do not."

A screeching howl echoed through the chamber as they stepped on the massive stone platform, alien and angry. The Belzafesters tried to form a protective circle around them as a swarm of shimmering apparitions swam into the sphere. Snakelike and ephemeral, the thousand phantoms swooped around them, growling with metallic screeches of fury. Neither part of reality nor divorced from it, they swooped around the gathered soldiers, treating solid objects with the same impunity as open air.

"What the devil are they?" Shan hissed in horror. "Daemons?"

"No," Daul replied slowly, a slight edge of worry coloring his tone, "They are most certainly not demons. Though what they are I - " He eyed Kg'Shar speculatively "- _cannot_ say."

His tone was deliberately neutral. He knew what they were_,_ Susan realized, he knew and did not wish to say to the Sh'lassen. Or perhaps to her, it was hard to tell precisely who the Inquisitor was deceiving at any point in time. But if Cairn's worried warbles were any indication he recognized the etherial shapes as readily as the Inquisitor.

"They are guardians of the Unspoken Gods." Kg'Shar replied with reverence. "They follow His whims and His will. They will not harm us."

"They seem pretty pissed," Susan interjected as the angry howling swarm shimmered and swam, snakelike bodies fading in and out of reality. "You sure about that."

"Reasonably," Kg'Shar admitted, flinching at their angry tone as he pulled an amulet from his neck and placed it upon the plinth. "His will is not always immediately clear."

"How comforting," Susan replied sarcastically.

Lighting rumbled through the sphere, red waves of electricity sparking off the walls and through the school of guardians. It danced among their snakelike bodies before colliding with the plinth and coursing through the floor. Susan raised her hand to shield herself from it as it shot out across the platform when a sensation like a hook being yanked behind her navel jerked her backwards, dragging her across time and space. A mesmerizing stream of light and color played across her eyes before tossing her back earthward, wedging her body elsewhere.

They were no longer in the tunnel.

"We are here," Kg'Shar tapped his hooves on the ground of an unfamiliar stone circle of white marble. A dozen red-robled Sh'lassen rebels stood, surveying the group with mild interest as an armored rebel general approached Kg'Shar, braying nervously. He brayed back frenziedly and galloped after the general towards a window of the massive spire.

"No," He said despondently in English, "This is too soon. They've breached the main gates." He turned to his general, "Slow them down! we must not be stopped from fulfilling our duty. The pact must be upheld."

The General brayed and saluted, nodding once before galloping away. Kg'Shar waved his hand to the Inquisitor, "We must hurry. The Alai and the devils will be upon us before we know it; you must follow me."

The Inquisitor nodded curtly and followed the Sh'lassen as he pulled a lever behind the teleportation platform, opening a secret door behind the rebel banner. Their hoary guide's path led to the outside of the spire, an ancient stone foot path following the building's outermost edge. Sulfurous acid winds whipped past at a hundred miles an hour, screeching angrily against a thin film of disruptive energy, the shimmering dust hinting at a path just wide enough for a single man to walk.

It was tough going. The uneven ground had never been properly sculpted into a path by the Sh'lassen, as their goatish agility having already made them perfectly suited to navigate the terrain. Susan's legs burned as she struggled to balance on loose rocks and jagged stone, not daring to risk touching the barrier. Instinct told her that it was not solid.

She muttered angrily to herself, thinking of horrible things she would like to do to Daul Hilder for dragging her along on his fool's quest, for exposing her to his secret shame. She could be back on Babylon 5 with a hot shower and some coffee beans from her own garden - oh God, she would literally killed for a warm cup of coffee.

Susan accepted Shan's outstretched arm, letting the man pull her up to the flat stone top of the spire before helping another of the Belzafesters to do the same. The roof of the spire was perfectly flat and featureless, without even a sign of wear or tear upon it. Kg'Shar walked to the center of it and clamped his hooves in a complex tattoo upon three upraised stones.

With a rumple of shifting stone, a spiral staircase appeared in the ground, leading down to god alone knew where. Kg'Shar waved his hand and smiled, "He waits."

Susan blinked and looked at Daul, her eyes widening slightly. Daul's normally controlled emotions were a wreck, his overwhelming sense of fear and anticipation too great for even a seasoned veteran to contain. The man was terrified of whatever lay in that pit, terrified and he wanted her to know it. He was broadcasting his fear to her so that she wouldn't do anything foolhardy.

Susan unholstered both of her pistols as she followed the inquisitor down the staircase and into the chamber below. Pictographs lined the walls of the staircase, showing golden armored men surrounding a red cloaked king as he went from world to world. Sometimes the king was fighting monsters, sometimes the king was being worshiped by his subject, but the king always stood proudly over the stars guiding his people.

The stairwell went down for ten stories, showing darker and more frightening images as they went lower and lower. The dull buzzing of electronics grew louder as they approached the staircase's end. The pictographs glowed a dull green, reflecting the light of the massive holographic displays lining an enormous throne room. Images of the battlefield played on each screen, flitting by faster than Susan's conscious mind could register.

Human, Centauri, Narn, Eldar, Dilgar, and half-breed bodies rotated in the air, translucently projected off of the same holographic composition. Their pale skin was translucently showing the biology beneath, vital organs glowing red as the image focused on them one by one.

A huge obsidian throne, large enough for an Imperial Ogryn to sit in comfortably, stood at the far side of the room. It faced away from the newcomers as its occupant watched the skies above, observing the flow of the battle in space. A massive gilded gauntlet swiped from one side of the screen to the other with a single finger, focusing upon the Endless Bounty as it pirouetted through the enemy ships, annihilating a Dilgar battleship with its main guns.

Kg'Shar whispered in a terrified voice, "This one brings the fatebringer, my Lord. The pact is fulfilled."

"So it is," Replied a booming drone of articulate High Gothic. "You are relieved of your burden, Kg'Shar, and your debt."

The gauntleted hand snapped its fingers and Kg'Shar's head imploded, his entire body dissolving down to its component atoms. The rebel melted down to a small puddle upon the floor as the armored man rose to his feet, wrapping himself in the thick red fabric of his cloak as he strode forward. The massive armored figure walked across the room slowly and purposefully towards Daul Hilder. He neither rushed nor tarried in his gait, simply gliding along the ground beneath the rich fabric.

"You are late." The armored man stated firmly. "You were supposed to arrive _two_ _years_ ago."

"Sorry to inconvenience you," Daul's temper simmered. "I'll keep it in mind for next time."

The armored man tilted his head, examining Daul from top to bottom. "I would have liked to spend time with you I think. You are an interesting specimen."

"You and I both know that I wouldn't allow that." Daul growled.

"You might try," The man stated without any inflection. "You would fail."

"Try me." Daul growled.

"Another time perhaps." The man chuckled slightly. "But at the moment, conflict serves neither of us."

"What are your intentions?" Daul barked angrily.

"At the moment?" The man's reverberated voice hitched in apparent amusement. "The same as yours... to an extent of course."

"How do I know that you're telling the truth?" The Inquisitor rejoined.

Before Susan could even blink, the man's body flew into motion, a hidden blade seeming to appear from nowhere as the armored man cut off the plasma gun off Daul's wrist and held the blade to the Inquisitor's throat. He looked at the astonished Inquisitor and raised his other hand, "Because killing you would be no more difficult than snapping my fingers."

He snapped the fingers and Susan felt a deep and piercing cold through her body as the walls glowed orange. She could no longer feel the warp. She could no longer feel anything. Her stomach turned in on itself as she choked on her own tongue struggling to breathe.

Cairn opened fire upon the armored man, but his shells just dissolved into a thin barrier of purple opulence surrounding him. He stared at the Skitarii in boredom as it bashed against his shields, looking down at the Inquisitor bound by the man's will. "Have I made myself clear?"

"Yes," coughed the Inquisitor, "Cairn, stand down. Everyone, stand down!"

The Skitarii reluctantly holstered his weapon as the man snapped his fingers again. "Good."

Daul stood up on shaky legs, extending a hand to Susan. She growled in fury as her senses returned to her, glaring at the armored man, "Who the hell is this bozo?"

"That bozo," Daul replied, his voice nervous, "Is a Triarch Praetorian... a Necron..."

"Indeed," The Necron's optics flashed as he waved open his red cloak in an elegant flourish, exposing his skeletal frame. "Welcome to Kages Baknor, Palace of the Sekkun Dynasty."

* * *

As always a thanks to Nuts! on SB for beta reading a short novel every two months or so.


	20. Chapter 20

The odious creature stared at the newly appointed Centauri Ambassador with mild disgust, flicking its fat tongue over its eyes to clear out the dust kicked up by opening the cabinet. Vir poked the oversized lizard with the handle of a broom in a futile effort to dislodge the creature from where it had apparently decided to nest in the large cupboard of his office.

The lizard hissed twice, before fluttering its blue flaps of calloused scales angrily. This was _its _territory now, and Vir was trespassing.

Like most buildings in the nascent Imperial colony, nature had reclaimed the ambassadorial residence of the Centauri with astonishing thoroughness. The staff left behind by the Centauri fleet had been minimal: ten Centauri Guardsmen and a single sullen secretary from House Drogo. It was all they could do to make the residence livable with so few warm bodies on hand to do what was needed.

Vir contemplated asking one of the guardsmen to come in and shoot the creature as Londo Mollari swaggered into Vir's office. "Are you still dealing with that damnable creature?"

"It's starting to budge," Vir prodded it with the shaft of the broom, jostling the disinterested creature's excess girth. It narrowed its slitted yellow eyes, trilling in irritation as it snapped at the shift. With a jerk of its neck the shaft snapped, cut clean along the razor sharp beak's edge. "Or not!"

Londo sprinted the distance to the cupboard, slamming the thick wooden door as Vir recoiled from a swipe of the now angry beast's claws. It scratched angrily at the cupboard door's interior, hissing.

"Vir, perhaps this is a job best handled by men with training," Londo pushed his shoulder into the cupboard door as it bucked forward, twisting the deadbolt into place to prevent the creature's escape. "And guns. Large guns."

"I didn't want to hurt him." Vir sighed.

"It would seem that you achieved your goal most admirably, Mr. Cotto." Londo jibed. "The creature is most definitely uninjured. Whether we remain similarly well is up to the quality of this lock. Hopefully they didn't try to cut costs on that; it would be like them to skip on details like that."

"Londo I don't know if I'm ready for this. I mean, an Ambassador? Me? It's too much." Vir swallowed nervously. "I mean, you know?"

"Vir, if you continue to fish for compliments then I will be forced to deflate your already non-existent ego." The elder Centauri picked up a bottle of Imperial wine gifted from the Lady Sáclair from the table, opening it and sniffing the contents inquisitorially. Apparently meeting his standards in such things he poured generous, measure into glassed for the two of them. "Which would be a shame so early into your tenure. I would prefer to save that for your first major screw up, so that I can enjoy the privilege properly."

"I just - " Vir interjected.

"I will hear no more of this insistent self-deprecation. You will do fine, Vir. The Imperials already like you, which is more than most Ambassadors can say. They trust you - to some degree, at least." He pointed to the bottle of liquor. "This is a good vintage of wine. Not a great one. Not a spectacular one. A good one. Do you know what that means, Vir?"

"That they didn't have much wine on hand?" Vir replied exasperatedly. "I'm not really a heavy drinker, Ambassador."

"Vir. When I give a gift on behalf of my government I buy something extravagant. It has to be something that will showcase the might and majesty of our Republic. When I give a gift as an Ambassador or as a member of house Mollari I must be memorable, but not wasteful, in demonstrating my own importance to society." Londo sipped the wine before continuing. "But this, _this _is the sort of wine one does not keep in a cellar for generations to prove that you own the bottle. This is not a wine that is brought out for some special once in a lifetime occasion. This is a wine to be drunk, a wine to be enjoyed with a pleasant meal. It is a casual gift between equals."

Vir took a drink from his own glass. It was...nice. Not the best he'd ever had, but it had a smooth and earthy flavor. "You're sure?"

"You have much to learn, Vir." Londo lounged in the chair of Vir's new office. "But you will learn, and learn quickly. You are not as incompetent as you at first appear."

From Londo, it was high praise.

"I've taken the liberty of contacting the Homeworld and informing them of the situation. I admit that they were surprised by your appointment to the position but when I informed them that it was you or no-one else, not even the Homeworld was foolish enough to miss a chance at permanent diplomatic relations with the Empire." Londo shook his head, and slapped Vir across the shoulders. "Why are you so determined to fight thism Vir? It is a good move for you, a smart move. Be happy, or at least pretend to be till I leave."

"It just isn't me. I'm not – I can't be," The younger Centauri pulled at his collar, trying and failing to cool his chest with the stiflingly humid air. "It's just – too important for me."

"It is important Vir. It is extremely important." The Ambassador swirled his wine, resting his hand upon the windowsill. Tropical birds trilled happily, flitting about the bright green foliage encroaching upon the settlement. "Vir, do you know why I was appointed to Babylon 5? It was not out of respect for my abilities and my position, I assure you. It was a joke. No one expected it to last more than a year. No one expected to last more than a week. It was a final insult to end my career and destroy what remained of my honor."

Londo turned from the window, raising his glass and leering happily as he chuckled in mirth, "But now? Now I am important. People seek me out, seek my favors. The fortunes of house Mollari are my own."

With a sigh of exasperated sympathy, he patted Vir's arm paternally. "You must never let them think that this job is – that you are – a joke. It must never be a joke to them, or to you. Our people are great, but we forget our limits. You have an opportunity to make yourself relevant, to make yourself capable. I expect great things of you, Mr. Cotto."

"But what about you?" Vir's mind returned to the devious man who now guided those same good fortunes Londo enjoyed, the snake Morden. "What will you do without me?"

"Vir!" Londo's voice cracked irritatedly. "I survived without you for years of my life. The couple of months it will take to send me a new secretary will not kill me."

"But-" Vir tried to get a word in edgewise, failing miserably.

"But _nothing_, Vir." The Ambassador downed his drink, slamming the glass on Vir's desk. "You will be here and you will do a good job of it too. I've promised the home office that you are a qualified Ambassador and I will not have you making a fool of me."

Londo frowned, a hiccup working its way into his speech. "And – and I feel it would be better for you to be away from me, Vir."

"Ambassador?" Vir swallowed apprehensively.

"Vir, things are getting beyond my control. You've seen the signs: the Vorlon fleet attacking seemingly at random, new powers arising that can destroy entire Narn fleets, and even the appearance of the Empire. The galaxy is changing, and I think not for the better." Londo picked at his jacket, pulling a burr from it and flicking it to the floor. "I've allied myself with dangerous people, Vir. People who will destroy anyone who is not a useful ally. I – I need you here Vir. I need you to be safe. I – I need someone I can trust in a position to help the Empire if something should – should something happen to me."

A hard rapping crack of a guardsman's knuckle upon the door to Vir's office silenced whatever reply he might have had. Vir looked to Mollari, briefly expecting the elder Centauri to speak, before remembering that they were in Vir's Embassy, not Mollari's.

He spoke a nervous, "Enter." that earned him an eye-roll from Ambassador Mollari. He could expect a lecture from Ambassador Londo on a properly scornful greeting in the near future.

The breast-plated guardsman strode into the room, saluting and declaring, "Ambassador Ta'lon to see you sir," before turning permitting a broad-shouldered Narn through the door.

G'Kar had appointed the singularly intimidating Narn to the rank of "interim-ambassador" until the Narn homeworld could select an appropriate diplomatic representative. Although he was probably the best choice from the Narn fleet on hand, Vir suspected that the decision had not been made in the best of faith by G'Kar. The warrior was a curious choice of representative, for as a bearer of the K'tok, he could never permit his blade to be taken by another.

Vir had, thankfully, been warned of Ta'lon's appointment with enough prior warning to issue a standing order to permit him to carry the K'tok blade to avoid a diplomatic incident. The Guardsmen still eyed the blade disapprovingly, but Vir doubted he had anything to fear from the other Narn.

In their time together on the _Endless Bounty_ Vir had come to know him as a recalcitrant, irascible, and crotchety grimace of a man, never using five words when a decent grunt and glare would do just as well. For all his apparent unpleasantness, though, he was a surprisingly forward-thinking person and well respected by his Narn peers.

Ta'lon did not like the Centauri, but by all accounts he seemed to tolerate Vir. It was as much as anyone could hope for, he supposed.

"The Imperial is causing me problems," Ta'lon interjected without preamble or greeting. "I assume he is causing you the same."

"Yes," Vir sighed. "He is."

The 'he' in question was none other than Gaer Tiber, the cyborg in charge of Belzafest's military. The sour tempered cyborg hated all aliens. He resented the embassies, the Centauri, the Narn and anything that wasn't a pureblood human. Gaer could not, of course, do anything overtly hostile to either the Narn or the Centauri while they had the blessing of both the Inquisitor and Lady Sáclair but that did not stop a number of "accidents" from happening around the alien embassies.

Supplies disappeared. Predators made it past the security perimeter. All manner of local flora and fauna proved to be regularly too much for the Imperials to clear without specialized equipment, which of course could not be spared for weeks or even months. Individually none of these were enough to suggest malfeasance, but the accidents were happening with such regularity that they could be nothing other than intentional sabotage.

The Imperial had obviously blamed it on internal strife with a displaced ethnic group, but it was obvious in the man's scorn that he was lying. Vir recognized that look of contempt. It was the same look his uncle had worn whenever he'd spoken of the Narn.

"I've had to repair my tachyon array ten times in the past three days." Ta'lon barked. "The flying skulls keep 'accidentally' flying into its transmission dish. The man claimed that we were 'summoning them' with our foul machine spirits."

"And what do you propose we do about it?" Vir looked to Londo. "Confront him?"

"Not unless you want to look like an idiot." Ta'lon growled. "No, that would only result in more overt hostility from the man. We do not need to irritate the hound to stop him from biting us; we need only yell to the ones holding his leash. You have... connections that I cannot claim."

Vir nodded. House Sáclair had a certain level of respect for him. And while he couldn't be sure of the Lady Sáclair, he knew for a fact that Ami Sáclair would be a sympathetic to his plight. "Do you want to be at the meeting?"

"Yes," Ta'lon growled. "I do."

The electric lights flickered, spitting and hissing as they struggled to draw power. A distant screech of machinery howled out from the center of the settlement, mingling with the screeching binary prayers of Imperial Machine cultists.

"Great Maker!" Londo shoved his fingers into his ears. "What the devil is that?"

"It would seem that the pillar they've been building in the town square is being put to use." Ta'lon commented dryly, massaging his own ear with a gauntleted palm. "They do seem determined to make the loudest racket possible."

"They ripped up most of the internal defenses we left behind," Vir shouted over the noise. "They seemed to think they couldn't trust them."

"Probably wise," Londo admitted. "They were outdated by decades, even by our standards of weaponry. They must look archaic to the Empire."

A pillar of light shot up from the town center, a flowering ark of blue light emanating from the fifteen story tower and spreading out into the sky. A thin film of energy spread across the settlement in all directions for ten miles, providing a translucent canopy of protective force. Tiny motes of light rained down from the energy dome, tiny dancing stars frolicking through the sky.

It was a shield, a shield that covered the settlement - and then some.

"Great Maker," Londo whispered.

"It is a wall," Ta'Lon growled. "Nothing more. Will, flesh, and minds will trump it no matter how impressive it might be."

"I would very much like to see you defeat that with your blade," Londo joked scathingly.

"I already have defeated it." Ta'lon replied. "A wall cannot keep out a man who is already beyond it."

The Narn nodded to Vir, "Arrange a meeting with the young Ms. Sáclair, before her mad dog takes it upon himself to correct that error."

Vir nodded, staring from Ta'lon's blade to the now closed closet and back as a thought took shape. "Ambassador Ta'lon. How well does a K'tok cut through scales?"

The Ambassador's lopsided mouth curved up into a grin, "The K'tok cuts through solid steel. Why?"

Vir explained his lizard problem over the sound of Londo's uproarious laughter and Ta'lon's muffled chuckling. Let them laugh! The creature would finally be gone. The Narn Ambassador wiped tears of mirth from his eyes, sauntering over to the still-rocking cabinet. "Come then Ambassador Vir, let us battle with your fearsome foe."

At least one thing would go right today.

* * *

Glowing with the baleful energies of Eldar sorcery, the construct cleaved its way through the hull with a curved scimitar. Smaller Eldar constructs swarmed through the hole, moving like nothing Magos Tuul had seen before. The necromantic machine-constructs of the Eldar were bulky things, monstrous machines summoned only in the direst of circumstances when soldiers were few enough that binding the the ghosts of the dead to mortal form need be done.

The Eldar construct towered some five meters tall, a lithe and spindly skeleton of psyochreactive plastics and glowing gemstones. It hovered in the center of the cargo bay on the gossamer swirl of four solar sails, glowing yellow material that shimmered like the wings of some giant insect. Its elegantly swooping chassis and elongated digits could barely be seen through the constant torrent of weapons-fire streaming from the shoulder mounted cannons.

These Eldar machines were not burdened with the sort of perpetual inaction he'd studied in theoretical xenomechanics. They flitted about the cargo bay on antigravity harnesses, as agile and vibrant as the Eldar pirates themselves. Tuul swore angrily as a burst of superheated matter flashed across his refractor field, covering his optics with his arm reflexively even as the augmentics shut down to conserve his vision.

His optic nerves still recuperating from the flash of the explosion, the Magos activated a subcutaneous transmitter.

The sensation of using servitor skulls to provide him with vision was stomach-churning at best. He watched himself hiding within the cargo crate as though he were observing from afar, the flickering green image of the battlefield as seen by the skulls focusing and blurring as constructs moved and were destroyed.

Though the mental image was bright green, Tuul knew that the entire room was actually painted red with gore. Uncaring, unthinking and meticulous, the Eldar constructs murdered everything in their path. Servitor, crewman and Ogryn alike had been gutted and gored in meticulous slaughter, filling what air had not already been sucked out into the gaping void of space with noxious gases fatal to anyone unfortunate enough to pass through them.

Ducking back into the relative protection of a supply crate, Tuul lashed out at the offending machine-construct, his plasma cutter severing the machine into two neat halves.

His oxygen gauge pinged twice; he was down to 80% of his oxygen supply. He could only sustain this level of physical exertion for another twenty minutes or so before he'd be forced to retreat or inject himself with the vial of liquid oxygen on his belt, which would only give him another ten minutes or so under duress. The servitors and other tech-priests would start to suffocate long before that, though.

They had to repel these boarders, and fast. They were the worst sort of xenos machines: well-designed, intelligent and deadly _thinking _machines. If he gave them a second's hesitation, they would win. They would triumph and the_Endless Bounty _would die in flames.

But they would not have their victory, not until they ripped it from Tuul's cold, dead hands. He was a scion of Oita, and he would not bow down to thinking machines, the Omnissiah's bane.

Another construct advanced upon his position, Tuul's shimmering vision painted red by the limited intelligence of the servitor machine spirits. Tuul waited for the flickering image to get within six span of him before leaping out from cover and planting the blade of his halberd within the creature's chest; it spasmed twice in an effort to lift its weapon before falling dead.

As Tuul tore his halberd from the construct with a kick of his greave, the construct's chest cracked open like a shattered walnut. A viscous green blood dripped down his blade in imitation of the blood seeping from the now-shattered chest of the construct. It was neither organic nor entirely machine, with internal organs of curious purposes intermixed with strange circuitry.

The magos had heard of such practices in rumors and the darkest of speculative reports. Splinter groups of the Eldar supposedly engaged in dark rituals and forbidden sciences to convert the raw matter of their victims into weapon constructs, to great and terrible effect. Tuul smashed the torso under his boot, enjoying the crunch as he toggled the command for the Tech-priests in the starboard quadrant to activate the Arco-flagellants.

Forced to respond to the charging madmen, a quartet of Eldar machine-creatures took to the skies. They swooped upwards, dodging the meter-long shock whips of the flagellants. The quartet became a trio as one of the combat-servitors caught an Eldar machine's leg with its tentacles, dragging the xenotech construct into the frenzied berserkers. It howled piteously as it was gored to death.

The flying trio fared little better, though they managed to shoot an Engsineer in the face, as a cadre of heavy-bolter servitors caught them in a deadly crossfire. The Eldar constructs burst in an explosion of flame and alien matter.

The massive Eldar construct bellowed in sympathetic pain as it shot across the cargo bay, smashing through the cargo containers in an uncontrolled fury. Ignoring the heavy-bolter shells pockmarking its hull, the construct annihilated the ground-bound servitors with a swift swipe of the scimitar and a shell from the warp-energy cannons on its shoulders. Eldar warp weaponry was as nightmarish a weapon that one could conceive. It opened a gateway to the hells of the Warp, dragging whatever was caught in its blast to be devoured by the forces of evil in a dimension of eternal torment.

For a race that prided themselves on their own sophistication, their propensity for violence was beyond compare. The constructs sang in psychically enhanced sing-song, tittering in the impossibly complex language of the Eldar as they attacked hither and thither, floating on their luminescent wings.

If the Tech-Priests could just get rid of the larger construct Tuul was sure that the combat servitors would be a match for the Eldar machines, but the contemptible xeno-dreadnaught simply refused to die. Between a flickering field of psychic shielding and the constantly self-healing armorm it was two steps short of invincible.

Tuul opened his optics, zooming in on the machine's wounds as the wraith-bone giant healed its cracked and lacerated carapace in seconds. How did one kill something that could just shrug off a hellfire shell? The nearest lascannon was two decks down and welded to a broken Leman Russ. A close range melta-gun shot or melta-bomb might have done the trick, but the Magos wasn't willing to get within swinging distance of the construct's scimitar.

_Come on_, Tuul thought to himself as he grabbed a smaller construct with his servo arms, clamping down and crushing them with a hissing growl of piston pumping power. _What would Kerrigan do?_

Omnissiah but it would have been great to have Kerrigan and her top-of-the-line war servitors right that second. The Ogryn based war-machines had been designed for precisely this sort of threat. But Omnissiah forfend that things ever go Tuul's way.

It was heretical to think it, but it seemed to Tuul that the Omissiah's will had provided more challenges than solutions as of late. It was a feeling all the more enforced as a lance of Eldar laser fire scored the pauldron of his armor, damaging the internal components to his augmentic limb.

Ignoring the "movement impaired" warning flashing across his optics Tuul tossed a fist sized ball through the air. It bounced off a cargo crate, flashing twice before a repulsorlift within the device launched it in the opposite direction.

Propelled by repulsion, it whizzed behind Tuul in a blur of motion, exploding in a ball of shrapnel to force a pair of constructs out from where they'd been attempting to sneak up behind him.

"Oh no you damn well don't," Tuul barked, grabbing the barrel of a construct's rifle with his adamantium fist. With a bellow of fury Tuul yanked the construct forward to block the wraithcannon shot from its companion.

As the bubble of warp energy disappeared, taking the construct's head along with it, the Magos slew the second construct with his halberd. Tuul's heart stopped as the massive construct turned its oblong head in his direction, aiming its cannons in his direction.

He leapt to the side, deactivating the magnetic clamps in his boots to take advantage of the loss in artificial gravity near the torn hull as he dodged a salvo of warpcannon fire from the massive construct.

Soaring through the tiny void of sanity, he felt the cold cloying screech of the warp echoing within his metal bones. The swirling black mass of darkness undulated with thousands of shadowy limbs and tortured faces before snapping back where it came from, repelled by the gellar fields of the ship.

This close to the hull breach, the vacuum of space sucked at his remaining flesh. Wet pops snapped from where the vacuum was yanking at the pink meat attached to his augmentics. Rivulets of the viscous fluid he'd replaced his blood with seeped from the open wound on his thigh, but not rapidly enough to worry him.

He still had 95% of his reserves intact according to his HUD; it wouldn't be till the 80% mark that he'd need to worry. Tuul landed hard, wincing as a piston in his leg cracked from the impact. A 10% loss in functionality to his left leg meant that he likely wouldn't dodge the next shot.

The massive construct aimed its cannons to Tuul, only to shift its attention to a furious arcoflagellant at its back. The crazed servitor whipped, bit, and tore at the construct's face and neck, shattering one of its translucent wings and deeply scoring the wraith-bone armor of its leg.

Making a mockery of the thick helmet upon the creature's head, a swipe of the giant scimitar spread arco-flagellant brains across the deck. The massive xeno-dreadnaught's swipe had been wide, exposing it to the four other combat-servitors at its flanks.

Tuul did not waste the opportunity to assess his surroundings. There had to be something in the Omnissiah-forgotten cargo bay that he could use to kill the spiteful thing. His optics lingered upon the gaping hull breach behind him.

Of course!

By the will of Mars, why hadn't it occurred to him sooner?

Tuul activated the transmitter in his head, tapping at the side of his face with his thumb and forefinger to activate the pressure sensors as he wirelessly tapped into the ship's battle-net. It was a dangerous move, as he wouldn't be able to move his actual body at the same time that he was engaging in the virtual space of the _Endless Bounty's_machine spirit. He had only minutes before the construct would crush the arco-flagellants.

Tuul soared through the data pillars of the network, authorizing and re-authorizing his credentials to the agitated data-angels protecting the ship's spirit. The blessed spirit constructs growled and gnashed their teeth, agitated by the battle and their master's anger, but they allowed him to weave through the thousands of pathways that lead towards what he needed.

Tuul hovered within the net, watching the hazy shape of the _Endless Bounty_ as it saw itself. A chaotic mess of sensor images and system updates combined into a single image of the majestic ship swimming though space in glorious battle. But it was not the great predator that interested Tuul, it was the flitting forms of lesser green ships around it. Hundreds upon hundreds of smaller ships flurried about the _Endless Bounty_ like a swarm of angry insects, fighting, killing, and dying with equal fury.

Tuul picked the ship best suited for the duty he had in mind, reaching out with his presence to touch the machine spirit of the fighter wing. He felt the lesser machine spirits, weaker spirits by far than that of the_ Endless Bounty_ and appealed to them. He offered them prayers of supplication and authorization, humbly entreating them to allow him access to their pilots.

Their data-angels were furious at the intrusion, rejecting him reflexively for fear that he might be an attacker. Tuul winced as they slashed at his fingertips from their little green dots, taxing his own implants to resist the damage. He tried a more ham-fisted approach, throttling them with a string of logic borrowed from Kerrigan's archives. The data-angels struggled, but ultimately were forced to acquiesce.

Tuul touched the spirits of the fighters, reaching out to their comms with his mind as he broadcast his thoughts into their speakers, "This is Magos Tuul. Authorization Gulf-Zeta-Emperor-1-4-5-Mars-Mars-Tyranid-Warp. Acknowledge."

A confused voice spoke back, replying in shock. "Uh... Acknowledged, Magos."

"I have a live fire situation," Tuul thanked the Omnissah for his luck. He'd feared that the ECM might distort his words beyond understanding. "I will be laser painting a target for you on deck 38 cargo bay G-36 marker sixteen. Bring on the thunder. Transmission band .21.0001Mars."

"Repeat Magos?" The pilot leader replied in confusion. "You want me to fire on the ship?"

"What is your name, boy." Tuul growled.

"Captain Marcos Magos."

"Captain Marcos, If I do not get the fire when I paint my target and the Eldar kill me, I promise that my last act on this earth will be to log your execution into the duty roster for the Inquisitor." Tuul didn't want to scare the boy, but he didn't have time for this. "Am I understood?"

"Crystal clear sir." The fighter pilot replied tersely. "Transmission band .21.0001Mars. ETA ten seconds."

Tuul snapped back to his body as the torso of a servitor smacked the bulkhead next to him. No longer burdened by gravity, the impact caused rivulets of servitor to burst into hovering balls of gore and offal. Tuul waded through the cloud of liquified servitor, pointing his index finger at the construct. A thin green beam of light shone from his fingertip, shimmering on the chest of the Eldar machine.

The construct's pristine form was cracked and lacerated from dozens of electroshock whip impacts. The warp cannons hissed and spat where they'd cracked. It hovered lopsidedly on its cracked wings, but even as it brandished its scimitar in unspoken menace Tuul could see that the damages were rapidly disappearing. The construct stared contemptuously at Tuul, growling as it slunk towards him.

The cannons, less damaged than they'd first appeared, hummed with the thread of warp discharge. The creature pointed to Tuul with its blade, psychically growling in what could only be described as a laugh. It was gloating.

"Mine's bigger." Tuul clicked his thumb in imitation of the hammer falling on a subber pistol, shouting through the screeching hiss of escaping gasses rushing into space.

Five beams of concentrated energy tore through the exposed hull of the ship, a torrent of lasfire guided by Tuul's laser painted target that exploded into a corona of green atomized matter. The giant Eldar construct screeched and howled, its psychically enhanced voice screeching in sing-song incomprehension. It lashed out with its blade as it died, catching Tuul at the waist and eviscerating his bowels.

Warnings flashed across his HUD, disabling his pain sensitivity as the bundle of synthetic guts fell from his belly and onto the ground. He ripped the scourged intestine from his chest, more irritated than worried for his health. A series of redundant augmentics in his torso would serve as a temporary digestive system.

Tuul stared at his crushed bowels spread about the shattered remains of the Eldar giant and assessed the damage as a pair of Tech-priest Enginseers dragged him out from the cargo bay and to their forward defense point.

"Omnissiah's bane," Tuul snarled, "The bastard got all four synthetic kidneys."

The tricky devices required an artificer Magos of Kerrigan's skill or better, meaning that he would have to do without. Tull would survive the wound to his body, but he wasn't sure that his ego would survive Faest Nor's smugness at replacing his broken synthetics with vat-grown flesh.

* * *

It was the sudden and unnatural breeze that warned Captain Xingjiang trouble was afoot. The airflows of a star-ship were static; one always knew in which way the wind blew. Acting on instinct he ducked to his right, shielding his face from a blinding pocket of starlight in the center of the bridge.

Where once had been nothing but empty space stood a trio of soldiers, two hulking beasts flanking a feline alien in combat fatigues - well, one and a half. The leftmost giant seemed to have had less luck that his fellows. His lifeless eyes stared confusedly up from where his body had materialized halfway through the deck, killing him most soundly.

Unfazed by their compatriot's half-formed and mutilated apparition, the strike team attacked. Klaus barked in shock as a half meter long pincer flung him from where he stood to collide with the bulkhead.

The bridge crew scrambled to unholster their PPG, unprepared for the sudden intrusion. Major Kria fumbled with the fasters on her holster. Her fingertips slipping on the leather as a barbed tentacle whipped across her chest, the woman's abdomen and left breast parted from her body as she let out wet squelching gurgles, the closest thing she could muster to a scream.

Furious at the death of their companion, the bridge crew opened fire on the giant, eight PPG pistols flash-frying the giant into charred monster. It died in an instant, but its survival had never been the point.

The heavily armored Dilgar had not stood idly by to watch the giant, charging towards Captain Xingjian with a laser rifle. The deadly orange beam sliced through Li's uniform, burning though the cotton fabric and searing the flesh of his back, though the shot was driven wide as the gunnery chief pushed the barrel up. The Dilgar assassin hissed in apoplectic rage as the chief swung on the heels of his magnetic boots and flung the alien towards Xingjiang.

"滚蛋 you cat faced bastard!" Captain Xingjian punched the Dilgar shock-trooper in the face, enjoying the crunch of flimsy cartilage as rivulets of blood sprayed across the bridge. Digging deep into the alien's ribcage with his serrated combat knife, the Chinese man swiped up and across and jabbed the knife in and out as he went.

He kicked the corpse upwards, propelling it out the door of the bridge before shouting to his XO, "Are you alive?"

"Lamentably so," the persnickety German officer groaned, massaging a plasma burn on his shoulder. "Where the blazes did that come from?"

"I do not know." Xi approached the malformed body of the giant who had not been dead on arrival, shoving it with his boot and marveling at the clean cut across its flesh. The giant's body seemed to have ruptured at a precise and perfect imitation of the floor beneath it, skull, bones and offal matched to every crack and imperfection in the ground.

On a hunch Li, tapped his link, "This is Captain Xingjian, Major Danvers."

"Yes Captain," Replied the Major.

"I need you to go directly below the bridge, to the forward armory, and tell me exactly what you find on the ceiling two meters from the door."

"Sir?" The Major replied.

"You heard me," Li glared at the bridge crew. "脑残! The hell are you standing around for? Do you think they stopped the battle so that we could catch our breath? Get back to your posts or we're all going to die."

Klaus shot Li a dirty look over the shoulder of a medic seeing to his wound, professional disapproval etched into the hard lines of his face. He thought Li was being too hard on the men? Bah - better to be abused and alive than slow and dead.

A bemused Major Danvers called Li's link in a mix of confusion and revulsion. "Captain, I – I found – I don't know what I found."

"Half an unidentifiable creature's corpse hovering in zero gravity with wounds parallel to the ceiling?" Li replied, his suspicions confirmed.

Major Danver's paused in pregnant surprise, " – Uh... yes Sir. That is exactly what I found."

"Those unbelievable 該死" Li hissed in fury, "They've figured out how to _teleport_."

"Oh, that is just spectacular," Lt. Meyer winced, halting his speech as a dressing was applied to his mangled shoulder. "They've got Vree technology?"

"I don't think so. It doesn't match the intel we have on Vree tech," Li strapped himself back into his seat. "The Vree despised the Dilgar as much as anyone else, and their teleportation tech is their strongest military edge."

Li stared at the tactical display, observing the shimmering form of the massive, winged dagger ships. "No this is something we've not seen be – **AFT THRUSTERS FULL REVERSE."**

Already jittery from the attack, the helmsman immediately smashed the emergency propulsion reserves into action with a single forceful blow, spinning the_ Beijing Beauty _out of the way of a dart ship's cutting beam. Warning klaxons screeched as a monotonous mechanical voice repeated_ "Hull breach in aft corridor six. Hull breach in hull corridor six."_ on an endless loop.

"Shut the bulkheads to that corridor and send a repair crew to the levels above and below that corridor to double check that there aren't any fractures in the deck. The last thing we need is to be venting oxygen in addition to every other damned thing," Klaus hissed into his link, a pained edge to his speech.

"Do we have a firing solution on those 死屁眼 ships yet?" Li turned to the surviving ops officer. The exhausted young man mopped his brow with the sleeve his uniform, wiping away the thick beads of sweat. The dark skinned officer chewed his lip, tilting his head slightly in meaningless assent. Li's temper snapped, "Ensign, yes or no, can we fire on the targets?"

"I... I'm not sure sir." The Ensign scratched the back of his head in thought. "I – we studied how to get through Minbari ECM in training, sir. It was basically all we studied in theoretical xeno-warfare. We never managed to get through it."

"So you can't," Klaus interjected.

"I have a theory sir. Just a theory." The Ensign pointed to the tactical HUD in the main view-screen. "These dart ships are way more advanced than the Minbari ships but they seem to have been designed to deal with a radically different set of sensors than the Minbari ships were. The computers can't even seem to see the distortions in spite of there being seemingly nothing to target."

"Get to the point." Li sighed.

"Sir... what if the problem isn't our sensors. What if _we _are the problem?" The Ensigh raised his hands placatingly at Captain Xingjian's incredulous glare. "Hear me out, sir. The ground chatter is talking about some serious telepathic warfare on the ground. We know that the Empire can use telepaths to send messages and that they seem freaking terrified of these new guys. What if there isn't actually anything wrong with our targeting sensors?"

"What do you propose?" Li cringed as a Filgar missile burst off the side of the_ Beijing Beauty_, prompting a new set of warning klaxons and monotone damage reports.

"Sir our SOP when we encounter any sort of ECM is to manually verify the targets of our automated targeting computers to make sure that they're not firing at empty space. Whenever we do that, our gunners are seeing a dozen different ships moving faster than the eye can follow." The Ensign shrugged, "Why don't we try just letting the ships computers have a go?"

"It can't possibly do worse than we're already doing," Li nodded in assent. It was a total breach of protocol and a violation of every single Earth Alliance military doctrine in dealing with electronic counter-measures, but needs were musts. Li pulled a data crystal out from his pocket and handed it to his XO. "I'm authorizing that the ship's weapons be put in the hands of the AI. Make it so, Mr. Meyer."

The XO took the crystal and produced one of his own, nodding solemnly as he floated over to the primary targeting computer. The German officer inserted both crystals into the data ports of the system, turning them a quarter turn to the right and speaking into the computer's mic, "Gunnery override six-zero-five authorization Meyer-nine-one-Beijing. All guns to main computer, full emergency military authorization."

The computer hummed in effort, unused to processing this much tactical data at once. The monotonous warnings of damages and danger onboard the ship drifted off into bellicose silence as every single byte of spare memory onboard was repurposed.

The forward laser cannons fired, shooting to a seemingly empty pocket of space behind a Dilgar cruiser. The energized particles exploded within the empty void, piercing the veil of shadows and crushing one of the smaller dart ship's solar sails and bursting its engines. The ship drifted listlessly towards the planet's atmosphere, spiraling through towards the planet's ocean in a brilliant corona of fire.

It had been an escort ship no larger than a Hyperion cruiser, but they'd _hit_it. They weren't fighting blind any more. "Send a message out on an encrypted channel to anyone who isn't dead yet. We need to press this advantage while we can we – oh … oh no."

Li grabbed onto the arms of his seat as the bridge bucked starboard, forced to the side as one of the massive black bio-ships collided with the_ Bejing Beauty_. He watched the external cameras in horror as tentacles half a kilometer long wrapped their way around the ship as the spidery protrusions from the black ship's hull perforated the _Beijing Beauty's_ hull.

"Can we still contact the rest of the fleet?" Klaus shouted over the growling screech of organic protrusions penetrating steel.

"No," Replied the comms officer. "Tachyon transmitters are down... engines are down, everything's down."

"We're being boarded, sir!" The ops officer swore in a language Li did not recognize as he tried to activate every bulkhead on the ship. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, they're just pouring through the hull."

"Is the self-destruct still operational?" Li growled.

"Sir?" Klaus swallowed nervously.

"Nossir," the engineering officer replied, his face pale. "Self-destruct is a no-go."

"What about the nuclear arsenal?" Li checked the charge on his phased plasma pistol. 40% power remaining before he'd have to reload.

"Unknown, sir. I'd assume the warheads are intact." The ensign replied. "The magazines are well-armored."

"Can we detonate those remotely?" Klaus queried, a nervous hitch in his throat at the idea of it.

"Negative sir," The Ops-officer shook his head. "All ship-board comms are fried. We'd have to do it manually."

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" Li stood up. "Grab any weapons you can find and follow me. We're heading for the ship's magazines."

"Sir." The nervous comm's officer swallowed, "I – I don't want to – I'm not ready to die."

"We're stuck to one of the largest vessels in the enemy fleet. We have no weapons and engines." Li growled in recalcitrant fury, "You've heard the ground reports of those things. There are likely thousands of them in a ship that large. They will kill, rape, and eat anything that they find on this ship. If I can blow the monsters to hell then I'm going to do it."

He looked to his soldiers, staring each of them in they eyes in turn. "They're entering through the midline at B Deck, between us and the escape pods. We're already cut off from the shuttles by hard vacuum. There is no escape. You can die like heroes or cower like cowards. The choice is yours."

To a man they followed him out the door and towards the forward magazines. It was a shame that nobility always seemed to come right before a man's demise; if people acted half as worthy as those who knew they would die, Li might actually have liked his fellow man.

* * *

Glimmering, skeletal figures emerged from thin air. Seeping in through the wisps of air that snuck past cracked walls, the silent figures carried baroque and curious weaponry. They moved without noise or pretense, their xenotech-steel greaves preternaturally silent.

The Necron were a mystery to the Imperium. Until a hundred years ago they'd been a product of rumor and speculation, a rumor built fragment by fragment from isolated incidents and unexplained battles with mechanical raiders. They were a bedtime story for border worlds, the skeletal men who stalked the stars. Reapers of flesh and bone, the omnicidal species had a soulless hatred for the fleshy beasts who wandered in view of their great necropolis.

"Blood of the Emperor's betrayal," Daul Hilder hissed the most potent oath he knew. "This is a Necron Tomb World?"

He recognized at least five distinct models of Necron soldiers in the room, though none seemed to conform to any of the blurry battlefield recordings of the Black Templar crusade upon the Tomb planets of Axxa VII, or the Blood Angel's extensive recordings of Necron troop movements. This was out of his depth: there were only one or two Inquisitors in the entire Imperium qualified to make any practical assessment of the Necron menace.

Omnicidal, immortal and possessing technologies beyond the wildest dreams in the synthetic hearts of the Adeptus Mechanicus, it was by the grace of the Emperor alone that the Praetorian had not flayed them alive.

Vira'capac hissed in horror, raising his weapon to shoot the Necron and prompting the Sh'lassen goat-man to do the same. The Necron waved a finger at the pair of them with an almost lazy sigh, activating energy field generators around the pair to freeze them in place. "I should hate to have to kill your adjuncts before we'd finished speaking, Inquisitor, as it would make you less willing to accept our terms."

"I doubt I have much choice in accepting or rejecting your terms." Daul massaged his damaged augmentic limb reflexively, running a gauntleted hand over the exposed wiring. "Your people do not negotiate, they merely demand."

"It is greatly refreshing to encounter someone who knows to give their betters proper deference, and realized why that deference is due." The Praetorian's mechanical drone hitched in imitation of amusement. "Especially from a race so talented at irritating the puppets of our oppressors. Your men have demonstrated a unique and admirable hatred for the Alai."

He waved his gilded fingers towards the holographic displays, summoning a thousand hovering images of the League Coalition and Imperial forces clashing with Eldar warriors. The Eldar were killing men by the hundreds, gleefully butchering human and alien alike. "It's a shame that their skill and ability does not match their impetuous defiance. There are few joys as glorious as watching Alai defeated by primitives. Not that you can kill them, I suppose, but the injuries are amusing to watch."

"I can assure you that I've killed my share of Eldar." Daul replied, centering himself around the memory of killing the xenos earlier that day. There were no xenos beyond the Emperor's justice; even the mightiest of them could be beaten. Even the Necrons could be beaten – not easily, but it could be done.

"You genuinely do believe that, don't you?" The Necron's optics twitched, a vestigial memory of the flesh it had once been. It was an echo of what might have once been laughter. "Allow me to enlighten you. The children of Asuryan are but one breed of many weapons. They are not flesh."

The Necron waved its hands, summoning the holographic Eldar to spin about his body. Tiny dancing figures weaved and bobbed around his crimson cloak to shimmer along the glittering, golden necrodermus armor.

"They have bodies, but the bodies are irrelevant. It's skin. A mask." A bitter echo etched its way into the ancient creature's whispering lilt, "The soul persists. The soul always persists. Yet another joke of the enemy, making weapons with the gift that they deny to their betters."

He grabbed the holographic image of an Eldar aspect warrior, crushing the energy projection within his gauntleted fist, mashing his golden fingers as though he were crushing the Eldar within his grasp. A few pregnant seconds passed while the furious Necron muttered to himself in his native language, lost in his hatred for the Eldar.

The machine was clearly rampant, raving, perhaps even insane. It was not unheard of for the mechanical men to resurrect in states of semi-coherence, trapped in their former memories of past wars. It may well not even wholly remember which battle it was currently fighting.

As long as the Necron's disillusions left it agreeable to talking rather than indulging in the omnicidal pastimes of its race, Daul was in no hurry to disrupt the flow of conversation. Every second the Praetorian spoke was a second longer to figure out an escape.

The Belzafester soldiers shifted nervously, eying the necron warriors behind their war-party with apprehension. For fear that one of them might get them all killed, Daul willed the thought _Not yet _towards the trigger-happy soldiers' minds even as he focused his physical eyes on the Necron. "What do I call you?"

"I have none – well, none fit for primitives to speak." The Triarch Praetorian sheathed his blade into a pocket of empty air, concealing the blade within a space unseen. "What you decide to call me is none of my affair. I have little interest in the affairs of lesser cattle. But the path was chosen, and I will walk it."

"What path?"

"Inquisitor Hilder, your coming was known to us, to me. It is no accident that I am at this remote scrap of useless turf. It is no accident that fifteen such remote scraps of nothing are being torn asunder by the unseen one." The Necron's eyes flashed, anger coloring the monotonous drone of his voice. "It is no accident that the Alai have been told of our hidden places, and that we have awoken before the prescribed end to our slumber. Someone searches for that which should be forgotten."

"Dead gods should stay _dead_," hissed a diminutive skeletal cyclops – a cryptek, perhaps – as he leaned upon a tall staff. Still a head taller than the largest of the humans, this new Necron hunched over as though bowed with age. An illusion of feebleness to be sure, theatricality for the benefit of their human audience.

His aged silk cowl quivering with the movement of miniature gears and servo-motors, the hunched Necron slammed his staff but on the cold stone twice, hissing like a boiling kettle. A garbled mess of screeching warbles and groans mixed together in grotesque parody of language, a murdered parody of the Adeptus Mechanicus prayers.

The Skitarii snarled in response, his furious binary punctuated with a hand gesture that required no translation.

The Inquisitor's heart raced as he steeled himself for the worst. He willed a subtle suggestion his apprentice, expressing with though faster than he could ever have hoped to say with simple words. Daul might be able to take out the gloom crystals closes to Susan, giving her time to kinetically implode the door-frame and let at least some of the men escape this death trap of a room.

A weak feeling of assent replied, Susan's abilities with the mental arts left much to be desired. No patience for the subtle nuance of the human mind, Susan's destructive potential would likely always outstrip her telepathic ability.

"Inquisitor, you do realize that the crystals can detect any psychic discharge in their presence? I know you're speaking with the other mind walker." The creature trilled a tone of near amusement, as it looked between Daul and Susan "I would greatly appreciate it if you would stop planning ways to kill me and my soldiers, Inquisitor."

The cryptek trilled in its whispering screech, "We are making great allowances for your primitive foolishness, but our patience is not limitless."

"You'll pardon my rudeness," Daul cleared his throat apprehensively. "It is a habit of my profession."

"I would have been offended by your cowardice had you not tried." The massive Necron sighed. "It would have been a shame to consider you a dishonorable foe. I do hate to slaughter those who are still of use."

"And what use would that be?" Daul queried.

"We have a common enemy Inquisitor, a common goal." The Triarch Praetorian snapped his fingers, prompting a shimmering apparition of Soren Faust to hover between them. It glared at the two of them in unimpressed disapproval, bloodless face and pale skin stretched across ancient features. "It is my intention that you, your allies, and your quest succeed and prosper."

Cackling in what could have been either laughter or pity, the hunched Necron rolled its cyclopean optic, tittering incomprehensibly. The Triarch Praetorian nodded once and held out his arm towards Daul, "Of course, your eminence. The time of primitive words has ended. What need be spoken hath been spake. It is time."

"Time for what precisely?" Susan's calm voice pierced the calm stilness after the Praetorian's pronouncement. Steady hands held her pistols at her sides, low enough that they could be brought to bear at a second's notice without appearing aggressive. There was not even a hint of worry in her stance.

She – Throne almighty – Susan Ivanova _wasn't afraid _of the Necrons.

They were just another alien to her. An unusual alien, perhaps, but she'd spent so much of her adult life surrounded by xenos that she lacked the instinctual fear of the metal men. For that matter, would she even know to fear a thinking machine? The Alliance employed numerous primitive machine minds in their daily lives.

Of all the Throne-cursed times for her to not have one of his memories, why did it have to be his survival instincts in dealing with the children of Necrotyr. She stared back into the Triarch Phaeron's glowing optics without flinching, awaiting an answer.

The cyclopean Necron laughed, a hollow and whistling sound. "The young races of this generation are bolder than I recall them being."

"The Nightbringer's image holds only the meagerest of holds upon them. It is to be expected." The golden Praetorian adjusted its cloak, pulling a glowing crystal from its folds. "The Praetorian orders can only guide chattel so far without drawing the attention of the enemy. We cannot all operate within the dimlit pocket realities of the Diviner."

The Necron held the crystal out to Daul between two taloned fingertips, the fragment pulsating with an eerie green light. "I propose an alliance. I shall grant you the peace of the Sekkun upon you and yours. We shall take what is owed to the Dynasties and crush the children of Asuryan to dust."

"I assume that you are planning to kill me if I refuse." Daul eyed the crystal suspiciously; even touching Necron technology was a dangerous prospect. The slightest touch of Necron xeno weaponry could enslave the mind and destroy the soul. Mindshackle scarabs, brain wiping subatomic particles or any one of a million of the cruelties of the Necrons could be visited upon those who agreed to an "alliance" with the Necron menace.

The Necrons did not have allies, only victims for a later date.

"Slaughtering your forces would be inefficient. I would prefer that they lived to spread what they see here today, to prepare your races for our inevitable dominion." The Triarch Praetorian waved around the room, clicking in the curious necronese. The baroque weapons of the Necron soldiers hummed to life, glowing green arks of lightning spluttering and dancing with fatal purpose within their scythe-tipped-rifles.

"You prefer to explore the alternatives?" The Necron queried, a slight joking edge to his monotony.

"An alliance it is," Daul took the crystal from the Necron's grip. The tiny sliver of crystal in his palm seemed to hold the weight of the universe as he slipped it into a pocket of his tabard.

"Well then Inquisitor," The Necron's monotonous voice broke into a cackle of murderous glee. "It is time to go to war."

* * *

The Eldar throwing-blade nicked the edge of David's chest, alien poisons eating away at the metal with a voracity matched only by the noxious gasses expelled in the reaction. He screeched in horror, ripping at the straps of his breastplate to tear the sizzling mess of ceramics across the deck, before ducking back into the cover of the med-bay doors.

"Get back, you foolish boy!" Donat's fusillade scorched the hall, narrowly missing the offending xenos who'd tossed the blade, "Get back and get another round in that useless sack of flesh."

The Med bay had been designed to funnel any attackers into a choke point, a narrow passage that could not be easily traversed without coming into view of the two gun servitors wedged into murder-holes along the walls. Low velocity bolter shells wouldn't pierce the hull, but their chemical cores would dissolve whichever boarder was foolish enough to get into their firing range.

While they were more than capable of aiming themselves, they were lamentably unable to reload on their own. This mean that every twenty shots either Donat or David would have to rush out of cover and manually reload the platform with chem-rounds. Right now the only thing standing between the civilians and injured currently behind the sealed bulkhead were two human lives.

David slapped the drum magazine into the fixed gun mount, hoping against hope that the emergency refractor field attached to his belt would stop what his breast-plate could stop no longer. The heavy canister slurped loudly as the air pressure within the gun changed, propelling one of the fist sized canisters down the hall to explode into a chemical inferno.

David rushed back into the cover of the med bay, massaging the chemical burns on his chest tentatively. His fingers stung slightly from the contact with the wound, "Throne!"

"Is it bad?" Donat tossed a tube of synthetic skin over to David, watching as the younger man stripped his shirt.

"It's poisoned, I think." David felt a stab of pain shooting through his chest as he sprayed syntha-skin over the wound. The white foam bubbled and sizzled across it's surface, reacting to whatever chemicals had been on the knife. "I – _Throne_, that hurts."

"Not poison; I suspect it's simply acid." Donat fired at a shadowy figure that popped its head around the bend, cracking it between the eyes. It hissed, wounded but not dead. Not an Eldar to be sure. The knife ears had allies? "Eldar poisons are potent, and if you'd been hit with one you'd already be writhing on the floor in agony. The vicious bastards aren't fond of waiting."

"Aren't they immortal?" David pulled out a syringe of general combat stimulants, a cocktail of immune boosters and synthetic adrenaline to keep him going. The needle went into his thigh smoothly, though his hands shook as he depressed the activator on the single use injector.

"You'll find that those who've waited longest are often the least patient once close to achieving their goal, young Sáclair. People ignore the longer term solutions, the better solution, when trying to get what they want right that second," Donat pulled a cigar from his breastplate and chewed on the end of it. He did not light it, as that would have given away their position, but just having the tobacco between his lips seemed to have a calming effect upon his demeanor. "No, for all their talk of eternity and permanence, the Eldar are as trapped in the moment as any of us."

"They're welcome to say impatiently trapped in the moment," David replied, "So long as they stay trapped on the other side of that corridor."

"How are we doing for ammo?" Donat shifted the cigar from one side of his lips to the other, sucking at it as though he were actually smoking it. He took the tube from his mouth and exhaled a phantom smoke cloud, relaxing in to the motion.

"I've got another two charge cells and we've got six reloads for the servitor guns," David did the math in his head. "So if we keep going at the rate we've been going -"

"We'll last for another ten minutes before they overtake us and slaughter us." The ship's first mate replied wearily. "Well, that's just wonderful."

"The med bay doors should last long enough for Osma's men to break through and save them, though." David replied. "That's what matters."

"Yes – yes that is what matters," Donat rubbed at his immobile cheeks. "A pity your uncle isn't here for this, he would have loved the thrill."

David looked up in confusion. Nathaniel Sáclair's siblings were rarely spoken of by the Captain and his mother hadn't married into the family early enough to meet them. David knew, of course, that they existed but knew little more than that. "My uncle?"

"Well, one of them anyway. The legitimate ones that is, your grandfather never would have acknowledged a bastard child – of the opinion that they were weaker and inferior, I suppose." He paused briefly to look at David, looking over the boy's wounds and discarded breastplate. He snorted in what might have been mirth and looked David in the eyes with a conspiratorial grin, "Even the Emperor was wrong once."

David snorted at the dark humor about the Horus Heresy, firing down the corridor as he listened to Donat continue the story.

"Your uncle Fabian was the middle child from your grandfather's second wife, a real shrew of a woman who insisted upon keeping her title of 'Dutchess Azarnego." Color seeped into the older man's cheeks, "I – uh – if your family asks who told you that it wasn't me."

"We're going to die soon," David replied, eyeing the ammunition count in the leftmost servitor. With only six more shots before he had to reload it, he'd best keep an eye on it. "I doubt it will come up in conversation with the knife-ears."

"Right, well – The Dutchess didn't much like that Sáclair and his siblings were ahead of her boy to inherit the ship. She did all that she could to prove that the Lord Sáclair was unfit for power, started all sorts of rumors that he was a drunk and a lech and what have you." Donat snorted. "The thing is that your uncle loved the rumors so much that he decided that Nathaniel was his favorite brother. The old shrew wasn't any nicer to her own brood than to her adoptive one, and the child was amazed by what his big brother could get away with. Nathaniel realized that it was far easier to become the rumors than it was to fight them."

"I don't understand," David blinked nonplussed. "Why would he do that?"

"There wasn't a story anymore. She'd start a rumor that he slept with a nobleman's daughter, Nathaniel would sleep with their entire family. She'd start a rumor that he was in drinking competitions with the Lionhearts, so he'd go down and win them." Donat chuckled. "You can't hurt someone with an identity they own. So Sáclair owned his role of the pirate king and groomed your uncle into his pirate apprentice."

"My Uncle went with my father?" David queried. "Another thrill seeker?"

"Your uncle puts your father to shame. He was so determined to reject his mother that he started taking risks, huge risks, to defy her. The Dutchess would say left, so he'd go right just to spite her." Donat's lips quirked in the ghost of a smile. "He'd lead defenders of the ship, charging any any all enemies armed with his blade, his greatcoat, and a witty challenge."

"What happened to him?" David queried.

"He got beaten to death by a mob of Orks in the cargo bay for being jaw-droppingly stupid enough to attack a group of them with nothing by a greatcoat, a blade, and a witty challenge. Bravery doesn't excuse foolishness," Donat sighed sadly. "He was a powerful personality like your father, but his mule-headedness got him in the end."

"Is someone going to talk like that about us when we're gone?" David shivered, two rounds left before he'd have to pop out and reload the servitor.

"The noblemen will, almost certainly, but they were going to gossip and criticize us for not cowering in our household's safe houses no matter what." Donat smiled, "But Bonafila will mourn us, and your family will call you a hero. They called your uncle a hero as well. He delayed the mob of Orks long enough for the Lionhearts to slaughter them with auto-cannon fire."

"I'd prefer not to die at all." One round left before reloading.

The lights flickered as a nightmarish screeching whine of a klaxon echoed through the entire ship. The normal boarding klaxon shifted from red to a deep purple, flashing from red to purple to red then back again. A voice spoke a terrifying pronouncement in ancient Damascan. It was a language neither Donat nor David spoke, but neither of them needed translation.

The _Endless Bounty's_ void shields had failed.

"We all have our time." Donat replied, "We've been living on borrowed time since the Inquisitor pardoned us anyway."

David lifted the ammunition cylinder, "The least we can do to thank the Emperor for that extra allowance is to take some filthy xenos out in the process."

"Even though we're likely all going to die when the ship goes up?"

"Of course."

David stood, shivering for a moment before Donat asked, "Do you need me to push you?"

"Please, I'm too terrified to get my legs moving."

Donat kicked, David moved, and the Eldar fired down the corridor once again.

* * *

Susan's eyes snapped shut in reaction to the abrupt shift in air pressure as the bright light shimmered across her body. Her body ripped backwards, pulled by an invisible hand gripping the back of her navel as it compressed her through a tiny pinprick of open space. Her body squelched through the point twisting and compressing through the empty space and back up into reality, ejecting her upon the cold, ash-covered earth.

She landed hard, gasping in shock as Shan's elbow connected with her midsection. The entire Inquisitorial Retinue appeared from the air around her, haphazardly projected from thin air. The teleportation was messier than the first time they'd done it, less controlled and more painful.

They were at the edge of the battlefield, north of the main Centauri beachhead. Susan could just see the outline of the Eldar titan in the distance, a shadowy statue with the bird-like shape of Eldar tank formations flittering about its body.

Susan shoved the larger man off of her, gasping in surprise as the no-longer-breathable air filled her lungs. The long talons of Vira'capac reached over her face, fitting the breathing mask in place before heading over to one of the Belzafesters and repeating the process.

"Throne ," Shan hissed from where he sat upon the ground. Unaccustomed to the sensation of teleportation, the Belzafester patted every part of his body to double check that he'd come out in one piece. Apparently satisfied with his assessment, he looked around the group, counting heads. "Is everyone alive?"

"Ask me later," Susan groaned, coughing as her body expelled the unwanted methane from her lungs. "I'm still not convinced."

The Skitarii helped the Inquisitor to his feet, weaving the openly damaged augmentic shut with his mechandrites in the process and sealing it from the elements. Cairn's normally jovial demeanor had ceased, an iron attitude of menace coloring his every movement. The man was displeased, though if he was more displeased by the presence of the Necrons or Daul's deal with them, Susan could not say.

He was uncharacteristically silent to Daul's comment of "Thank you, Cairn," not even sparing the man his usual silently sarcastic jibe. Though it was probably distraction more than anger that caused the irre

The ground beneath them shook and shivered, seismic irregularities inducing the geysers of the great plains to disgorge ten mile high pillars of spinning green flame. The pillars weaved about, guided by some unknowable mechanism dancing through the air, before smashing across the ground in molten whips of destruction.

The molten whips lashed around the arms and legs of the Titan, forcing the Eldar super-heavy vehicles to re-direct their fire.

"What sorcery of the nameless gods is this?" V'Clath whispered in fear. "What have we woken?"

"There is no sorcery at work, V'Cath," The Inquisitor stared out across the battlefield, "No sorcery, just science. The impossible science of the Necrontyr."

The ground rumbled and shook, pulsating as though it were water rather than earth and stone. The massive spire at the center of Matok cracked and crumbled, its wide black face pierced by glowing runnels of unnatural viridian luminescence. The mountain started to spin like a top, flinging building-sized hunks of earth to the battlefield. Soldiers on both sides struggled to avoid the massive stones as they collided to the ground, crushing anything beneath them.

The spire of Matok burst, shedding its aeons-old skin of obsidian and revealing the true face of the fortress. A golden starship, larger still than the mountainside it hid in, rose from the earth. It was a steep and angular pyramid riding upon a crescent moon, a construction of alien mechanical wisdom.

It rose from the ground, ignoring the frenzied salvoes of weapons-fire from both armies. Even the eldar Titan's weaponry was as nothing to the shimmering energy fields collecting and coalescing around the shell of the interstellar pyramid.

It rose into the air, hovering above the battlefield through no obvious means of propulsion. It hung in the sky as though to defy the lesser creatures beneath it to comprehend how it disobeyed the physical constraints they labored beneath. It unleashed a single, screeching pulse of air, a noise so loud that it displaced the clouds of gas around it in the screeching garble used by the Necron Cryptek.

The two kilometer wide shaft left behind by the Necron starship shimmered, shifted, and disgorged a swarm of metal insects. The buzzing thrum of millions of metallic wings thundered across the gorge, heralding the beginning of the end for the Eldar Titan. The monstrous horde of Necron insects descended upon the Eldar Titan, literally devouring it.

Susan scrunched up her face as the Titan's pilot projected pleas for help, asking, ordering and finally begging for someone to assist him. She couldn't understand the Eldar language, but she understood his pain. She gasped in horror as she realized that the pilot was going to be eaten alive.

Daul rested his hand on Susan's shoulder, projecting an empathic barrier across her mind with the physical contact, "There are some things that even an Inquisitor need not explore."

Susan watched the sands shift, disgorging glimmering figures she knew all too well were Necron foot-soldiers. "They're going to kill everything they see."

"No," Daul spoke slowly. His voice, already distorted by the vox-caster in his armor's helm, came out in the sort of halting jerks one might expect from someone struggling to catch a memory long forgotten. "The Triarch Praetorians are incapable of lying or deceit, and despise it in all forms. If they say that we will come to no harm then will come to no harm. It's – it's how they were built to be."

"Inquisitor?" Susan replied, worried for the man's state of mind. Had the fear cracked him?

"I- I uh..." The Inquisitor cleared his throat, shaking his head to dispel the cobwebs from his mind. "The Triarch will keep his word. It would reflect poorly upon the Phaeron of whatever dynasty we've stumbled into if he broke a direct promise, especially one to help fight the Eldar."

"Sir," The Belzafest comms officer held up his portable vox caster. "We've got access to the Imperial comms channels. Your orders sir?"

"Tell them – Emperor have mercy upon my soul." Daul looked out at the pillars of flame battling the half-devoured Titan, "Tell them that we're expecting re-enforcements."

* * *

Physical size was virtually meaningless in a zero gravity engagement. The normal physical advantages that one might expect from being a larger, faster, and stronger were, in fact, detrimental. It took years or even decades to re-train the muscles and mind to compensate for the sudden abdication of Newtonian constants, and even longer to be able to fight in them.

Li Xingjiang, never a patient man, had opted for a surgery in his youth to remove his sense of vertigo. It damaged his sense of taste, but he'd never once regretted the decision. He was a small target in the best of situations, that paired with his surgically enhanced ability to move in open space gave him a huge boost.

Li bounced off the conference room wall, kicking hard to shoot past the half-breed creature aiming for him. The creature, more vicious than well-trained, struggled to keep up with the Captain. It turned slowly, pulling itself with long tentacle-like protrusions to correct its position in the open air and shoot the little man.

Li didn't give it the chance. His phased plasma pistol scorched the beast's abdomen, cooking the creature's spine and paralyzing it from the head down. Its jaws snapped open and shut, howling in agony as the limp body floated across the room.

The comm officer's jump into the room wasn't as well judged as Li's: he shot across the room and clipped the opposing wall, catching himself awkwardly with his left arm. The man's wrist cracked, spinning him out through the bulkhead and into a trio of half-breed monsters.

As the unfortunate officer's death screams echoed down the corridor, the weapon officer tossed a plasma grenade into the confined space with a shout of "Fire in the hole!" Unencumbered by gravity, the four corpses' worth of offal shot in all directions, filling the passageway with the venomous blood of the half-breeds.

"God dammit," Klaus growled, "Why did you do that? Now we can't go through there, the ones with horns have bellies full of acid."

"What did you want me to do? Shoot them?" The officer waved his pistol in irritation. "The last one we shot exploded so hard that it actually ruptured the hull."

"We can close the bulkhead on a decompressed section of the ship, we can't just walk through acid." Klaus fired into the mess of organs, dissolving a bubble of venomous blood creeping towards them. "We're going to have go around."

David Ng, the Engineering officer, coughed twice to interrupt his superior. He held up an alan wrench in one hand and a dislodged table top in the other. "Might I suggest an alternative?"

Li nodded, "Do it."

Officer Ng pushed the ceramic bock forward, pushing the human and alien remains out of the corridor and into the room beyond. Weapons-specialist Gomez led the way into the forward chamber, taking the unenviable duty of being the first to enter a possibly occupied room.

The Argentine officer whistled twice - all clear. Ostensibly he was to whistle once were it unclear, but Li felt it was redundant considering the necessity of weapons-fire if enemies had been present.

"There are fewer of them heading for the ammunition than I'd expected." Ops officer Vincent's hands shook as he hovered into the room. "Only a dozen so far."

"The G.R.O. are on the level they entered." Li whispered in reply, cutting his hand across his throat in admonition of Vincent's loudness. "They're going to have to fight their way past them to get to it."

Klaus shrugged, as he typed the override into a sealed bulkhead's computer. The massive double doors to the cargo bay were nearly as wide as the room itself, "If the Inquisitor's information is to be trusted, they are drawn to carnage. It's in their base nature."

"It's in my nature not to let annoying crew men ramble when we're supposed to be doing something foolish and noble." Li snarled, his hackles raised at the idea of relying upon that man. "Are we going to be able to reach ammunition storage through the deck 15 connection?"

"It will if we can – oh _Scheiße_." Klaus backed slowly away from the now open bulkhead, holding up his arms and raising his side arm to a less aggressive pose. Ten Dilgar shock-troops hovered in the cargo bay, hanging mid air in their gravity harnesses. The pointed their heavy laser rifles towards the human soldiers, dead to rights.

The damned flight deck, Li had forgotten that they could enter through the flight deck. Dilgar gravity harnesses gave them an unprecedented level of mobility in zero-gravity assaults in the later stages of the war, it was foolish of him not to anticipate this.

Li closed his eyes and spoke what he expected to be his final words, "It's been a pleasure gentlemen. I look forward to seeing you all on the other side."

They were good last words, he'd been preparing for a moment to use them for years. It was a shame really that after practicing them for so long he would use them prematurely. A quintet of curious figures stepped out of thin air behind the Dilgar, massive cyclopean giants of gold and steel. They glared up at the Dilgar in silent contempt, raising their elongated rifles and firing brilliant green beams of energy through them.

The Dilgar howled in confused agony as the green beams tore them apart, flaying them inch by inch and pulling the atomized matter into the swirling vortices at their gun barrels. In a matter of moments the Dilgar assault team was rendered down into their component particles, a thin film of dust the only indication that living beings had ever been there.

"Your plan is unnecessary Captain," Screeched a metallic voice from Li's left. A hunched cyclopean giant hobbled towards him, walking normally in spite of the total absence of gravity. "Your death – the death of this ship – it is premature. You are still needed."

"And who are you? You're as gaudy as a 斷背." It was not Li's most charitable statement to date, "狗崽子/狗仔子, is there a sign on my ship saying 'boarders welcome'?"

"讓自己冷靜下來" Hissed the cyclopean hunchback. "We are not your enemy on this day. The bargain has been met. The first half has been given, now comes the second."

"Oh for – I don't have time to listen to some 死鬼 ramble like a Vorlon," I have a ship to save.

"Man-thing, your part is still necessary," Hissed the giant. "For that, and that alone, I do not kill you where you stand for comparing me to those contemptible liars. Fear not for your ship. The Deathmarks are more than a match for this pathetic rabble."

"Deathmarks?" Klaus queried.

"An unfortunate necessity of politics." The cyclops hissed. "I have no urge to linger here. I will speak my peace, and then you primitives are welcome to continue as you will."

"And what do you have to say?" Li asked.

"Tell me, captain, do you believe in gods?"

"I have no use for gods," Li snapped angrily.

"A wise opinion," The cyclops smiled. "One we shared implicitly when we killed our own."

* * *

G'Kar dragged the Centauri general back, hissing angrily at the approaching half-breed hounds. The forward command post had been precarious, by G'Quan he had warned the General Ezra that it was an over-extension of their forces.

But did he listen? No of course not. Pleasant though he might have been, his Centauri pride was still well intact enough to ignore the advice of a Narn, even a seasoned Narn tactician. By no reasonable standard could the General have planned on the mountainside exploding into a space ship and taking to the stars, but then that was after all why one did not place a forward command post in a precarious position. One had to live long enough to actually command when things went wrong.

It was a weakness in Centauri tactics that G'Kar himself had exploited on more than one occasion in their war for independence. "I was a fool not to see this."

"In-initial battle projections did not account for presence of Necron threat." Jak fired a shotgun blast at a half-breed hound that strayed in range. "Unreasonable assumptions of responsibility help no-one. New probabilities indicate less than preferable probability of survival."

"How not preferable?" G'Kar slapped the cheeks of the unconscious Centauri General, waving a centauri medic over to tend to the man's wounds.

"Current probability of survival in clash between Necron soldiers and Eldar forces puts survival at 0.000065%, presuming that we can find an area dead to both Necron deep scans and Eldar telepathy."

"Jak, if you think we're going to die I much prefer a straight answer to a statistical misrepresentation," G'Kar shot a hound's haunch, saving a Centauri soldier from its jaws. The wounded hound was immediately set upon by its hungering pack, stripped down to the bone in their blood frenzy.

"We're going to die in a manner that is considered to be horrible any reasonable standard not involving Eldar pirate torture methods." Jak chambered a new round in his shotgun and fired, missing a hound as it pounced upon a retreating Narn shock-trooper.

"There, was that so hard?" G'Kar snarled in irritation. Whatever initiative they might have had to repel the Eldar warriors had been broken by the sudden arrival of half a mountainside. The Earth Alliance intervention forces were in utter shambles. Casualties had been relatively minimal but the sudden change in geography troubled the Allied forces far more than the half-breed coalition.

"Sir!" Jak grabbed G'Kar by the collar, dragging him down. "Necron forces incoming!"

G'Kar batted the terrified man's grip, poking a crimson eye out from cover to see what terrified the Imperials more than demons. Eight massive skeletons rose from the ash, seemingly tearing through the bones of the earth as they lifted themselves. Their golden bones shimmered with glowing green hieroglyphs, spitting bursts of energy into the air around them.

The eight warriors turned their double-barreled carbines on the hounds, cascading bolts of lighting jumping from victim to victim as though propelled by a mind of it's own. The pack of hounds died in agony, cooked from the inside out.

The Skeletons outright ignored the Narn and Centauri soldiers as they tried to kill them. Heads smashed, torsos melted, fingers cracked but the skeletons just kept walking, shambling forwards as their bodies knit themselves back together. They shambled closer, and closer, carbines at the ready.

They continued their unstoppable march, walking up to point blank range before – before continuing as though they hadn't even noticed the presence of either Narn or Centauri soldiers. They walked past G'Kar without so much as a glance, striding into and through the sheer cliff face behind the Centauri fallback position.

"Do you want to tell me precisely what that was?" G'Kar queried.

"Unknown," replied Jak. "But it is safe to say that I will have to adjust my statistical assessment of the situation."

"Sir!" A young Centauri officer rushed towards him, "The E.A. evac is here. I'm under orders that you, the General and Mr. Jak are to fall back to General Franklin's position immeditately."

"Very well," G'Kar nodded. "We shall have to inform him of this new development any – _what in G'Quan's name is that?_"

He pointed with a gauntleted finger at a shambling shape moving towards the fallback encampment. It almost looked like a group of Centauri, though their skin was stretched and distorted as though it were not properly sized for the Centauri's body. They moved unnaturally, a shambling half-march that was a far cry from parade standard movement.

"Sir... you need to move now. We can take care of – whatever these are." The Centauri officer nodded to the Narn and Centauri holding the line. "Leave it to us."

"Very well," G'Kar hated leaving his men behind, but he was needed elsewhere. He helped the medic lift the General as they climbed the makeshift ramp at the back of the command post to reach the smooth ledge that served as a landing pad for transports. The boxy Earth Alliance vehicle was waiting for them, hovering only inches above the ground.

The pilot stuck his head out, shouting over the gunfire below, "Sir we have a ten-minute window to take off before we get stuck here for another hour. We need to go."

"Very well, very well," G'Kar shoved the general into the back unceremoniously, much to the chagrin of the Centauri medic, before helping Jak into the transport. He was just about to enter himself when a voice screamed from behind him.

"Wait!" Screamed the terrified Centauri, "Don't leave me here. Don't leave me!"

G'Kar turned and watched in horror as a Centauri guardsman fell to the ground, tackled by a silver skeleton with eight inch scimitars for fingertips. The skeleton, covered in the recently skinned flesh of a Centauri soldier, leered at him through glowing optics. It chittered in what might have been laughter as G'Kar scrabled onto the transport shouting "Go, go damn you! Go now!"

A trio of skeletons set upon the unfortunate Centauri soldier, splitting him like a suckling pig. They fought over his skin and bones, chittering angrily over the best parts of him as they painted themselves in his parts.

"Tell me this t-t-thing has T-T-Throne Cursed weapons!" Jak swore.

"And then some." The pilot growled in fury, turning to his co-pilot. "Curtis, light these bastards up."

Curtis, a dark skinned man with wide biceps and no neck grunted once before activating the nose mounted heavy plasma-repeater on the ship's nose. The trio of skeletons disappeared in a wave of plasma fire.

Their bodies writhed in the effort to fix themselves, twisting and undulating before dissolving back into the sand as though they'd never been. The black man whooped in victory, "Who-rah!"

"Set the tires and light the fires," The G.R.O.P.O pilot fist bumped his co-pilot. "Let's give the Centauri a little bit of covering fire before we get – oh dear God in heaven."

The airborne transport swooped back over the cliff face, staring down into the valley G'Kar had been in only minutes before and stared down into hell. The valley was full of psychotically cavorting silver skeletons delighting in gore. There was not a scrap of the retreat position not covered in gore.

"How is that even possible?" G'Kar whispered in awe. "We were gone only moments."

"Early exploration of Necron architecture indicates that Necron forces are capable of existing in parallel or overlapping time frames," Jak nodded. "Linear time is not a necessity."

"We're fighting people who can time travel?" G'Kar hissed.

"Slowing time is confirmed on small scale conflicts, larger scale applications are pure speculation." Jak sighed. "The walls of the valley likely impeded whatever temporal distortion prevented the rest from escaping."

"I'm guessing these things aren't taking prisoners?" The pilot queried.

"Highly unlikely." Jak replied.

"Sir with your permission I would very much like to drop a bunker-buster on these mother fraggers." The co-pilot growled through clenched teeth.

"Permission granted," G'Kar nodded, staring into the soulless eyes of a skeleton as it stared up at the transport as though contemplating how to jump up to it. He knew that creature, by memory, knew it in the old tongue as it was spoken by the great prophet G'Quan.

The soldiers of darkness were the shock troops of the ancient enemy that the Narn had once expelled from their home world with the help of the angels. G'Quan preserve them, the darkness was awake. The first death was back and with them the soldiers of darkness.

Death walked among them. Ancestors save them all!

* * *

"Throne cursed whore's son of a slag! Sergei screamed as he came face to face with a three meter-long canoptek wraith. The machine observed him with mild interest, looking him up and down before shifting through the wall and away from him. He hadn't even had a second to raise his weapon before it vanished, and it took him a few seconds to get his heart rate down enough to proceed.

"Anyone else getting confused?" Falin queried, scratching his head as he prodded an Eldar corpse with his foot. "These things keep having us dead to rights then just fragging off."

"Don't waste time and energy fighting things that are going your way soldier," Gazan grunted. "I've got my hands full stitching you lot up without you seeking out new ways to die."

Sergei couldn't help but agree as he watched a phalanx of jet-bike mounted skeletons clash with the Eldar flyers, countering the Eldar skill with mathematical precision. They were inelegant, moving with such unnatural accuracy that they did not seem to be part of the world around them. They would abruptly shift at right angles and zoom away, uncaring of the physical laws governing all other persons.

The battle between the two xenos armies raged around the smoldering hulk of the Eldar Titan, dodging and darting through its wreckage as they struggled to outmatch each other.

"But what _are _they? We've seen five different types of skeletons, none of whom so much as looked us in the face as they well – did this." Falin waved at the charnel surrounding them. "If I'd known the Inquisitor had this chambered, I'd have been a whole lot less worried about making it up to the front lines."

"The Inquisitor's a son of a bitch but I don't think this is his doing." Sergei squinted out at where the fortress mountain had once been. "Whatever was under that mountain had to have been there for a long time. Longer than even he can plan."

Argos, grunted, "How far are we from their command post?"

"If the maps are still accurate – and lets be honest, they're probably not – we're only one tunnel from their main command post." Falin ran his tongue over his lips, whetting them in thought. "If the skeletons have been as thorough in the forward bunkers as they've been in the adjoining tunnels then we should be able to break through their lines."

"Should be?" Sergei snorted. "Well it's better than our odds have been so far. Why the hell not."

He shouldered his rifle and dropped into the trench beneath the bunker, curling his lip at the squelching bloody much and mire beneath his feet. If he survived, this uniform was getting burned before he took a week-long shower while scrubbing himself raw. Throne alone knew to what he'd been exposed.

The surviving Lionhearts weaved their way along the path, staying low. They didn't have to work hard to avoid notice; the skeletons were mounting an offensive along the western front. Their shambling figures glimmered in the dusky shadows of the battlefield, a legion of death illuminated only by their weapon's fire. It was like staring into the face of armageddon.

Sergei did not even bother to kill the sobbing Dilgar warrior crouched in the crook where three trenches met. The pitiful mewling kitten of a man sat there, grabbing at the cauterized stump that might once have been a leg, howling to raise the dead. The pathetic creature did not even notice him as he slunk by, so engrossed was it in its own pain.

"Sir," Gazan examined the creature's wound more closely. "A moment."

Sergei turned and watched as the Medic pulled out a pain suppressant and injected it at the base of the Dilgar's neck. The creature's eyes rolled up into the back of its head as it succumbed to a dreamless state of narcotic bliss, whiskers twitching contentedly.

"And why in Throne's name are you using good narca on a xenos enemy?" Falin chided in irritation. "We could easily have just shot it."

"That would have given away our position," Gazan replied. "And there is nothing to be gained by letting the creature suffer. If we win this battle we will need captives, we will need knowledge. If it survives, a crippled Dilgar will be easier to manage."

"Are you planning on carrying it?" Argos queried, holding up his flamer to demonstrate that he had no room.

"I'm – down -" Sergei dropped into the disgusting mire, spreading the muck over his body to conceal himself, doing his best to look dead. His thundering heart throbbed in his ears as the Eldar soldiers leapt the tench, howling to raise the dead. Their long plumes of razor-laced hair hung loosely from conical wraith-bone helms, jingling with the noise of jewelry carved of what could only be human bone.

Long capes of electrified razor wire dangled behind them, sparking and spitting in their wake. Anyone unfortunate to touch them would doubtless have fallen unconscious, leaving them open for a glowing power scimitar to find a neck. They weren't Banshees, Sergei knew enough of the Aspect warriors that he could be sure of that, the aspect warriors were a more uniform group. But neither were they the Dark Eldar Wytches so ubiquitous in the pirate armada of the Dark City, who would shun all forms of armor in contempt.

The screeches howled their way into the distance, though Sergei dared not breathe till the echoing clang of power scimitar on metallic skeleton rumbled in the distance. He lifted himself to his feet and stared into the pacified eyes of the Dilgar. The drug addled alien was sitting upright, using his remaining hand to make a castle out of the blood filled muck.

He wiped the muck from his face as he stared at the humming creature as it swayed from side to side. "Gazan, Pit of the Eye, how much of that did you give him?"

"Twenty, no forty cc of morpha." Gazan growled, using some of his drinking water to sanitize his hands. "It should be enough to last him till we get back."

"Can it walk?" Sergei queried.

Argos swore, "We are carrying the damn xenos?"

"No Argos," Sergei smiled, "We're bringing a key."

* * *

Biting down on his belt to keep himself from chewing through his own tongue, the Captain muscled through the pain as he prow of the_ Endless Bounty_ smashed the bioship's side. Firing vortex torpedoes at close range into the Faustian Bioship was not Sáclair's favorite memory. In fact he would go so far as to say that he far preferred Daul's caring ministrations with a knife and electroshock maul in the heyday of his imprisonment.

Still the bio-ship would die, which was easily worth the pain. The backlash would, of course, destroy the primary firing mechanism of the vortex torpedo launchers, but Sáclair was out of vortex torpedoes anyway. For that matter he was out of magma bombs, cyclonic torpedoes, and any other ordinance of worth.

Even the damned shields had failed. Kerrigan's improvements ultimately required a defter hand than Tuul could provide, especially whilst co-ordinating a counter assault at the same time. Damn that woman. Was trying to sabotage the ship once not enough for her spite?

Sáclair ignored the sense of panic from his ancestors, the overwhelming finality each of them felt for what was seemingly destined to come as the primary power distributor guiding the main engines cracked under the pressure of cleaving the bio-ship in twain.

The engines sparked, they sputtered, and they died. The formerly elegant grace of the _Endless Bounty _lay crippled and stilted in the burning husk of the black ship, groaning like a beached whale. Never, not once in Sáclair's entire life, had he felt so powerless.

Men grow old, dreams die, but it is rarer still for a man to stare into his own dream as he dies.

He watched in terror as the Eldar Night Stalker whispered its way through the battle on pinioned wings of starlight, predatory and agile in its deliberate menace. It was beautiful really, an elegant war machine as old as the stars themselves. As a boy it had been his secret dream to pilot an Eldar starship, perhaps with his own pet gryx.

It was, all things considered, an elegant way to die fitting of someone of his status. Throne, if he was going to go out, he'd be damned if he did it cowering like some dull peasant.

"We're being hailed by the Eldar ship sir," Sácomer chimed across the vox link, his copious jowls jiggling across his hololithic projection. "They say they are prepared to discuss the terms of surrender."

"Open a channel to the Eldar ship." Nathaniel Sáclair chuckled, "No, scratch that. Open a channel to all ships in the system."

"Message sir?" Queried Sácomer.

Sáclair winced as he felt another section of hull decompress, an intentional one this time. He allowed himself a tiny smirk at the sensation of Eldar boarders being sucked out into the void of space. "Open the vid-link. I want to be able to say this in real-time."

Reclining into his throne, Sáclair straightened his jacket and shirt. One must look presentable in the face of the enemy, after all. It would do no good to look like some wastrel vagabond for one's final words. To do such was undignified, and in the face of his own imminent death, what else did Sáclair have left but his dignity?

The great hololith shimmered and reshaped itself into a narrow face, more peculiar for its striking similarity to humanity than its differences. It was a perfect face, far too perfect. Human faces were not evenly matched, not properly balanced. Human faces had bumps, ridges, imperfections, tiny details to let you know they were not simply made on an assembly line like some sort of machine.

The Eldar had no such visible imperfections, and were less attractive for it. Their pinched and perfectly balanced faces were striking but could never be described as attractive, more like stylized dolls than actual people. The unnatural beauty of the Eldar always seemed to be perfectly accentuated by an omnipresent sneer of contempt.

The Eldar face spoke, its cat-like eyes narrowing as translucent lips danced across tapering ivory fangs. Its voice forced its way out of the astropathic translator painfully, the servitor's syllables colored with pain as runnels of blood ran from its eye sockets.

He caressed the head of the astropathic servitor bound to his throne, caressing the feminine ear and scalp. She cooed pleased and pressed back into the scratch, enjoying what little comfort she had left. It was unlikely the girl would survive her encounter with an Eldar mind, but then again, she was hardly alive to begin with.

She spoke in pained tones, struggling to keep up with the myriad of complex motions made by the Eldar vocal cords. "You will discuss the terms of surrender?"

"I lament to inform you that the_ Endless Bounty_ is not properly equipped to accept your surrender," Sáclair replied, sipping from his flagon. He greatly enjoyed the look in confusion in the Eldar's face as the astropath fed his message back in the Eldar language.

"What?" The Eldar replied nonplussed.

"You have a sizable army on the planet, even if I don't include the Dilgar and traitor forces. I have nowhere near sufficient facilities to house all of you in conditions that meet the basic standards a prisoner of war encampment must meet." Sáclair ticked down his fingers one by one with each point. "And I'm afraid to tell you that my government's policy has been to never accept the surrender of Eldar."

He smiled into the furious face of the Eldar, "It is with great shame that I inform you on behalf of the Empire that we are simply unable to accept the surrender of the Eldar aggressors at this time."

"Impudent princeling" The Eldar snarled, bolts of warp-fire spitting from his eyes and mouth. "You are a fool. A chance was given for a challenge met with honor. The path is chosen and done. If it is to be your doom, then so be it."

"I'll see you in hell, knife-ear," Sáclair replied. "I'll see you in – " he blinked as his sensors reported something impossible " -hell?"

The mountain fortress of Matok was exiting the planet's atmosphere at a remarkable speed. He sniffed his wine tentatively, searching for the odor of takka root or gejan berries. Finding neither he decided that, in fact he was not hallucinating as the mountain continued to fly out from the planet's atmosphere and into the starry void.

It was a starship, larger than even the largest Imperial warship Sáclair had ever seen, larger than even a Ramilies-Class Starfort. A ship with power readings worthy of the mightiest of hive cities; the Sh'lassen rebels had been hiding a secret worthy of note after all.

As his sensors reconciled the impossible with reality, Sáclair looked up at the Eldar and smiled, "It would seem we both are destined for the Eye today."

The Eldar's glare hovered in the air long after the hololith ceased to function.

"Do we know if that thing is friendly or an enemy?" Sácomer quibbled, his quivering jowls shaking in fear.

"It isn't as though it makes a damn bit of difference." Interjected Navigator Illrich, poking a pair of spectacles up his upturned snub of a nose. "We can't move, we have no large ordinance, and no Throne-cursed shields. We might as well be a target."

"Eldar are moving to engage the pyramid," a young officer interjected, his voice shaky from exhaustion. "They're covering the retreat of the black ships into warp."

"The Dilgar?" Sácomer queried.

"Still engaging the Non-aligned Worlds ships. They seem to be frightened enough of us to stay out of range of our guns." The officer replied. "Emperor be praised."

"The Emperor protects," Sáclair replied. If he actually survived this battle, he was going to mass twice a day.

Sáclair extended his sensors and watched as the angry school of Eldar ships swarmed the pyramid like furious hornets, stinging and stabbing at its sides with pulse lasers and arcane warp-energies. Their guns were as water to a stone, colliding with it before rolling off to the side. It hung in place, passively accepting the incoming fire as its sides throbbed with green light.

The light pulsed and pulsed with increasing frequency, speeding up little by little, until the sides of the pyramid were erupting with a staccato frenzy of pulsing green light. The green flecks spun in an endless cascade of shifting viridian, twisting and writhing till they finally erupted into beams of iridescent lightning. The green bolts jumped from eldar dart ship to eldar dart ship, crushing them into shattered fragments of xenotech.

The Eldar capital ship's weapons fared no better, scorching the monolithic pyramid's hull but doing little else. A pulsing blue tractor beam wave snatched the Eldar ship, entrapping it in filaments of starlight and shadow. The larger ship struggled, pinioned wings of energy pushing at the implacable force of the pyramid, but for naught.

The pyramid ship fired its main weapon at the Eldar ship, tearing out one of the craft's wings like a small child with a moth. The Eldar ship struggled harder, firing again with all its weapons at the pyramid. The pyramid's hull pulsed with flecks of green as it charged its lightning once again.

And then a very strange thing happened. A pair of black ships simply appeared from thin air. The jagged and crab like craft opened fire upon the pyramid, cutting across the lower section of it with purple beams of immense power. The Pyramid ships' blue tractor beam dissipated, freeing the Eldar ship to speed off into the stars on its remaining wings, disappearing into the web-way.

The pyramid unleashed it's lighting upon the crabs, but only shot it's beams into empty space. The crabs had disappeared as quickly as they came. Apparently furious at having lost its prey the pyramid ship fired its lightning at the Dilgar fleet, destroying or crippling what few ships remained.

Sáclair watched in confusion as the Pyramid folded in upon itself, seeming to implode into a speck of nothing, leaving the battle in a puff of steam and plasma. The battle was over.

"We won?" Illrich asked in confusion, staring into his view-screen. "I'm not registering any remaining enemy troops."

"Let's settle for 'we survived," Sáclair replied, wincing as reports of the Eldar boarding teams increased in severity. The knife-ears did not take losing well, apparently. "Sent a request for soldiers out to whichever of our allies are still alive and see how many of our boys survived on the ground. I want these damn boarders off my ship."

* * *

By the time they reached the Dilgar command bunker, the Lionheart's captive had become lucid enough to realize that he was a prisoner of war. He didn't appear to be irritated by this developmentl in truth he was veritably relaxed in his resignation. Though if the tattered state of his uniform and the sallow sunken hang of his flesh were any indication, the siege had been as hard upon the attackers as it had been on the Sh'lassen.

The Dilgar soldier gnawed at an Imperial ration, purring as its sharp fangs tore off the cured meat. It struggled with the wrapper, using its remaining hand to close the package and pocket it as Gazan helped it to reach the reinforced hatch to the command bunker.

Sergei pointed to the door, speaking in what little Interlac he knew. "Open it."

The Dilgar shook his head, replying in his own bastardization of the universal language of the local xenos. "Human no want in there. Bad man in there."

"Yes human want." Sergei replied, raising his side arm and pointing it at the Dilgar's knee. "Human get or cat looses leg."

The Dilgar yowled in his native tongue, screeching what could only have been the Dilgar equivalent of "if you insist" as he shrugged his remaining shoulder and kneeled down above the hatch. The Dilgar pressed down in the center of the door, wincing as a needle shot up from the sheer plate. The locking computer warbled for a few moments before flashing green, hissing an affirmation in the Dilgar tongue before yawning upward and outward, revealing the sloping staircase downwards.

"Gazan," Sergei nodded twice, tapping the side of his neck with three fingers. The confused Dilgar fell into blissful narcotic sleep for a second time that day as Gazan injected it with a powerful dose of morpha. Cripple or not, bringing the Dilgar with them would have been suicide. A single cry of warning and it all would have gone to hell.

"Argos," Sergei pointed to the stairwell, beyond the hatch. "Lead the way."

The Lionheart nodded, igniting the pilot light of his flamethrower and walking gingerly along the uneven steps. It was slow going down the stairwell; whoever made the bunker had been clever. There were no overt booby traps, as they would have been too dangerous for any messenger trying to get word to the Dilgar Warmaster, but the Engineers used simple spatial awareness as a weapon.

The Dilgar did not appear to suffer from the same spatial awareness cues that Humans did, meaning that stairs had no need of proportion or uniformity. Sergei had to grip the wall to keep his balance along the rough cut earth as it sloped up and cut away at irregular moments, reaching out with his feet to check each step. A star might be only inches away, and it might well be a foot or deeper.

They trudged through the dull light of the corridor in alarming silence, the distant noises of battle and death muffled by tonnes of hard earth and obsidian. Each step Sergei took thundered in his ears with its whispering echo, his padded boots insufficient to silence his own footfalls. The controlled breathing of the Lionhearts sounded as loud to him as his own heartbeat, a silent cacophony of covert noise he was sure would bring the guards down upon him at any moment.

The guards - where were the guards? The absence of guards at the door he understood, the two poor fools had been grabbed by the elongated pincers of some flying insect-like mechanical monstrosity as it flew by, but certainly by now he should have run into a sentry or messenger. He could even see signs that there had, at some point, been guards on duty. Small alcoves dotted the stairwell, tiny spaces just large enough for two men to sit abreast or one man to fire comfortably from cover.

They'd clearly been used recently, as the discarded remains of tobacco and still steaming contents of chamber pots hinted at the recent presence of their occupants. Half eaten meals and still playing vid devices lay discarded along the stairwell, tossed upwards by someone heading down the stairwell in a hurry.

Something had gone terribly wrong for Faust's forces.

The signs of battle became more evident as they headed deeper. Thick gouges of rock wall sized for the claws of half-breed warriors met with the charred scarring of plasma fire, the discarded corpses of the fallen soldiers eviscerated with surgical precision.

"Throne above," Whispered Falin in fear, "Who were they keeping out?"

"Keeping in," Gazan corrected, pulling a glow stick from his pocket and cracking it to activate the dull yellow chemical glow.

"Come again?" Argos interjected.

"The bodies are all facing the same way we are, or at least they were," Gazan pointed to an ogryn sized boot print in the muck. "Whatever they were fighting came from inside, and fought it's way out of the bunker."

"A half breed?" Sergei queried.

"I hope not," Gazan said in a worried voice. "If Faust has created a half breed that can do this, it bodes ill for the future."

"Gazan, everything we see bodes ill for the future. Life bodes ill for the future." Sergei sighed. "We keep going. The Warmaster's last known location was here." He looked down at the corpses, "Argos, burn the bodies behind us as we go, I don't want half breeds showing up in a blood frenzy."

"I'll do what I can sir," Argos replied, "The Emperor protects."

"The Emperor protects," Replied Sergei as he took over the lead.

The carnage increased as the Lionhearts walked closer to the command bunker. Dilgar warriors lay slaughtered over fixed gun emplacements, their eyes still clouded from confusion. Hulking half-breed corpses had been used to overload the intake vents to an emergency fallout void-shield, shorting out the barrier.

"Pit of the Eye," Falin pointed to the hand prints on a discarded bulkhead door, "Someone ripped this out with their bare hands. Their bare hands. That has to be as thick as my arm."

"Whoever they were, they're gone now," Sergei replied, cricking the tension out of his neck as he leaned on the door frame of the Dilgar command bunker.

"What makes you so sure of that?" Queried Gazan.

"Because he got what he wanted." Sergei pointed to the support beam above the holographic conference table, indicating the pitiful figure of hanging from the rafters. The Dilgar woman had been crucified, her arms and chest nailed to the rafter with long blades before someone had taken to time to expose her chest and carve the word "failure" into it. Her tongue lolled out in apparent agony, accentuating the thick runnels of blood dripping down her corpse and into the holographic dispay the the battlefield below her.

"The Dilgar Warmaster," Falin let out a low whistle. "The Inquisitor wasn't kidding about Faust taking a grim view of loosing a battle. I'd hate to be a general in his army"

Sergei climbed up on to the table, examining the blades intently. They were swords by any reasonable measure, though the thick grip of them would seem to indicate that whomever had used them had fists to put an Ogryn to shame. "That's odd – It can't be..."

"Can't be what sir?" Argos replied, looking up from an xenos cogitator.

"You're in for a treat, soldier. You're going to get to see and hold something most men only hear of in stories." Sergei pulled one of the swords from the Dilgar Warmaster's hands, examining the mark of it's hilt, "An Adeptus Astrates combat blade."

"What!" Falin squawked, his eyes bulging, "You mean - "

"He means," Gazan Interjected, as he examined the Dilgar Warmaster's wounds, "That there was a Space Marine in this room less than thirty minutes ago."

"Deus Rex Imperator," Sergei smiled at the weapon, admiring the stylized icon of a of a white-winged blade. "The Emperor protects."

Then a horrible thought came to his lips, the reality of what had happened coming to him all at once. "Oh - Hellfire," Sergei stared at the blade in his hand like a venomous snake, his eyes bulging in horror, "What I mean is that there was a Space Marine in the command bunker of Faust's forces that didn't have to fight to get **in**."


End file.
